Just van Rossum

Just van Rossum (born 1966 in Haarlem) is a Dutch typeface designer, software developer, and professor at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague.

He is the co-founder of design firm, LettError, along with Erik van Blokland.

Just van Rossum is the younger brother of Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language.

Just van Rossum was born and raised in the Netherlands alongside his brother Guido.

In 1981, his father bought a Sinclair ZX81 home computer.

The ZX81's primary function was to allow the user to write programs in BASIC.

As a result, Rossum developed an understanding of computer science principles in his teenage years, an advantage that would influence his identity and philosophy as a designer.

In 1984, Just van Rossum enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague, where he studied under Gerrit Noordzij, an influential Dutch typeface designer and author.

Sensing potential, Noordzij approached Just in a hallway and introduced him to fellow student Erik van Blokland who happened to be the younger brother of reputable typeface designer, Petr van Blokland.

Noordzij allegedly grabbed both students by their wrists and said "I think the two of you ought to talk".

Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland developed a relationship that continued throughout their careers.

After graduating from the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague in 1988, Just van Rossum joined the Berlin design firm, MetaDesign, as an intern while the company was still in its infancy.

There, MetaDesign founder, Erik Spiekermann, tasked Just with finishing a new typeface that Spiekermann had been working on.

During his stay at MetaDesign, Just's friend and fellow student, Erik van Blokland, was also hired as an intern after graduating in 1989.

While working together in Berlin, the two interns began theorizing about potential innovations in typeface design, culminating in their joint publishing of an indie magazine in that same year titled: LettError.

The magazine primarily consists of editorials denouncing the overreliance on Bezier curves and the lack of innovation by typeface designers using Postscript.

The LettError magazine encapsulated the anarchic and rebellious vision of its editors, containing layered and misaligned prints as well as sardonic fake adverts.

One such advert describes a fictitious typography, textbook poking fun at their current employer (Spiekermann) and prior academic upbringing, a phony review exclaiming: "At Last a Book About Typography NOT Written By Erik Spiekermann".

The magazine proposed the idea of a "Random Font" which would produce glyphs with unexpected variations upon every print, as opposed to the uniformity provided by a typical typeface.

Borrowing the name from their previously-published magazine, Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland formed a business partnership, referring to themselves collectively as LettError.

It is a serif typeface and the first proof of concept of a "Random Font" as theorized by the duo in 1989.

The programming behind the typeface effectively subverts Postscript standard practices by replacing standard commands with an original function written by Just and Erik.

In Postscript, the commands "lineto" and "curveto" are used to draw lines and curves from one point towards another, forming the shape of the final glyph.

The team wrote a new function, "freakto", which was similar to "lineto", with the key difference that the destination point would be randomly generated somewhere near the intended location.

FF Beowolf is a modification made to the roman typeface, Kwadraat, where uses of "lineto" and "curveto" are replaced with "freakto".

The result is a jagged, angular typeface that appears different every time it is printed.

Aside from being the first procedurally generated typeface, FF Beowolf is also the first typeface distributed by Berlin-based type foundry, FontShop (hence the FF prefix which denotes that the typeface is a member of the FontFont library, distributed by FontShop).

Impressed by the quality of his revisions, Spiekermann hired Just as a fulltime employee and credited him as a co-designer of the typeface, which was later published as ITC Officina Serif (EF) in 1990.

LettError published its first typeface in 1990, titled FF Beowolf.

Returning from a type conference in 1990, Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland had the idea for their follow up to the success of FF Beowolf, the FF Hands series.

FF Hands consisted of two fonts developed by scanning and digitizing alphabets handwritten by each designer.

Aptly, these typefaces were named FF Justlefthand and FF Erikrighthand, denoting the author of the original handwriting as well as their dominant hand.

The FF Hands typefaces were the first fonts created by scanning handwriting.

In 1992, LettError released a series of five fonts designed exclusively by Just van Rossum.

The InstantTypes collection consisted of typefaces developed by digitizing the text on various household items including: cardboard boxes (FF Karton), children's stamps (FF Stamp Gothic), and Dymo label tape (FF Dynamoe).

In 2002, the Design Institute at the University of Minnesota held a competition between six typeface designers to promote the upcoming 2003 Twin Cities Design Celebration.

The designers were each asked to develop a proposal for a font that would represent Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland collaborated on the font Twin which won win the competition.

Twin was a typeface whose characteristics would be procedurally generated by a "Panchromatic Hybrid Style Alternator".

In 2011, FF Beowolf was one of 23 typefaces acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of their Standard Deviations Exhibition, displaying important digital fonts.