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       Teaching in Museum Plantin-Moretus

Frank E. Blokland (Leiden, 1959) studied Graphic and Typographic Design at the Royal Academy of Art (kabk) in The Hague from 1978 to 1982. As a student, he set up the Letters] working group, of which many now well-known Dutch type designers were members. Blokland’s ideas about typography are clear: ‘Typography means more than bringing order to the passing on of information; it means elevating to the sublime the mould in which the process of passing on is cast.’
 

      Bulthuismonument (1986)

In 1985, Blokland was one of the winners of the annual type-design competition of the United States-based company Chartpak and his typeface Bernadette was published as a dry-transferfont by this company. A year later, he designed the Bulthuis Monument (Bergum, Friesland), including the lettering, on behalf of the æsthetic-design department of the Dutch Post.

During the eighties, Blokland designed the letterings of a number of monuments, among which the Homomonument at the Westerkerk in Amsterdam. More assignments in this area followed, such as the lettering of the plaque at the Jewish Orphanage in Leiden and that of the Franciscan monument in Oegstgeest. At the same time, Blokland continued to concentrate on carving letters in stone.

      House number chiselled in bluestone

      Bluestone gravestone finished with gold leaf

      Paperweight (design for Sem Hartz)

Blokland wrote the book for the television course Calligraphy, the Art of Writing in 1990; 16.000 copies of this book went over the counter. Furthermore, since the eighties he has written approximately 150 articles on type design and font production for various graphic and design magazines, such as Compres, Pers, PrintBuyer, Hamburger Satzspiegel, and Page.
         After years of preparation, Blokland founded the Dutch Type Library in 1990, the first and now largest producer and publisher of digital typefaces in the Low Countries. A few years later, he initiated and supervised the development of dtl FontMaster, a set of tools for professional font production developed by dtl and the German company urw. Blokland has designed typefaces such as dtl Documenta Sans, dtl Haarlemmer and dtl Romulus (such as dtl Haarlemmer based on drawings by Jan van Krimpen).

        Teaching first year students in the Graphic Design department of the kabk

        Teaching second and third year students in the kabk LetterStudio

When Gerrit Noordzij retired from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 1987, Blokland was the first of the younger generation to succeed him. As a Senior Lecturer, Blokland teaches writing, type design, and font production in the graduate program of the Graphic Design department.

        With a 19th-century type mould in Museum Plantin-Moretus

        Talk during the annual academic meeting of the Plantin Institute in 2019

        Presentation of an Expert class Type design diploma in 2019

        Speech at the EcTd graduation ceremony in 2022

In 1995 he was invited to become a professor at the Plantin Society / Plantin Institute of Typography in Antwerp. He has also lectured as a visiting professor at institutions such as the Delft University of Technology, the Lahti Polytechnic University, and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Blokland spoke at many international conferences, such as typo Labs 2017 in Berlin and (below) the ATypI 2008 conference in St. Petersburg (photo: Ekaterina Kochkina).

April 2013 Blokland designed the calligraphic lettering of H.M. Queen Beatrix’s Abdication Act. The letters on the act, in Humanistic Minuscule and Italic hand, with all their contextual letter variants, were written by Blokland and converted by himself into two digital fonts, Abdicatie Regular and Abdicatie Italic, using the dtl FontMaster tools. The text was subsequently silkscreened on parchment.

        Abdication Act of Queen Beatrix (2013)

On 11 October 2016 at 11:15 a.m. Blokland successfully defended his PhD dissertation On the Origin of Patterning in Movable Latin Type: Renaissance Standardisation, Systematisation, and Unitisation of Textura and Roman Type at Leiden University.

        Promotion ceremony in the beautiful Senate Chamber of Leiden University

Blokland’s research was conducted to test the hypothesis that Gutenberg and his peers developed a standardized and even unitized system for the production of textura type, and that this system was extrapolated for the production of roman type in Renaissance Italy. For this, Humanistic handwriting was fit on a fixed inrinsic pattern.

        Blokland receives the Laureateship Honoris Causa from the Plantin Institute

On Saturday evening, June 25, 2022, the 70th anniversary of the Plantin Society / Plantin Institute of Typography was celebrated in the breathtaking historic setting of Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp. During the atmospheric event, Blokland received the Honoris Causa Laureateship in recognition of his important achievements in the field of typography in Flanders.

        Explanation about a type mould during the Typography Summer School 2022

        Blokland flanked by EcTd 2023 graduates in the courtyard of Museum Plantin-Moretus

        Teaching EcTd 2024–2025 students under the roof of Museum Plantin-Moretus

        More information

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