•Try dtl’s New Exquisite Website! 

| Home | Search | Site index | About | Contact |

At the retrospective of the work of Chris Brand (1921–1998), which was held in Breda in the spring of 1996 and in Brussels in the summer of the same year, it was striking how extensive his œuvre is. In addition to the original version of Albertina that was put into production by Monotype in the late 1950s, drawings of typefaces such as Draguet, Delta Grotesque, Denise cursive, and Elsschot were also on display. Elsschot in particular stood out because of the combination of a serifed and a sans serif version.Brand worked on this typeface until his death in December 1998; he was so driven that he had to draw letters every day. ‘Otherwise I feel guilty,’ he said himself, but he designed for pleasure: ‘as a retiree I had a wonderful time drawing.’
        Brand’s heart was in education. He regarded the academies as guardians of quality and viewed with dismay the use of computers in education. The computers had to make way again for the type case. ‘I am conservative, they say: developments are moving very quickly. We are far from the end, because I do not think I will have to draw anymore. However, I always hope that the pencil will remain in place,' Brand said. He also saw the computer as the cause of bad fonts: ‘the majority that comes onto the market at the moment –you are bombarded with new alphabets– is rubbish’.

Brand was very pleased that the digital version of Albertina is so successful. dtl Albertina became the house letter of the Royal Library Albert 1 in Brussels, after which the typeface is named, and was the corporate-identity typeface of the European Union for more than a decade since the summer of 1999.

       Chris Brand

Search | Site index | Contact | Terms of use | Trademarks | Acknowledgements

Last update: 4 February 2024. Copyright © Dutch Type Library, 1998–2024. All rights reserved

dtl Headquarters | Zwaenenstede 49 | 5221 kc ’s-Hertogenbosch | The Netherlands
dtl Studio | Daliënwaerd 71 | 5221 ke ’s-Hertogenbosch | The Netherlands
phone: +31 (0)73 614 95 36 | fax: +31 (0)73 613 98 23 | e-mail: info@dutchtypelibrary.com