F
Frank E. Blokland (Leiden, 1959) studied Graphic and Typographic Design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK) from 1978 to 1982. As a student, he founded the successful Letters] working group in 1980.
In 1985, Blokland won the annual type design competition by Chartpak in the U.S., and his typeface Bernadette was released as a rub-on transfer type. In 1987, he designed the lettering for the Homomonument in Amsterdam, followed by numerous other commissions, such as the lettering for the Jewish Orphanage in Leiden and the Franciscan Monastery monument in Oegstgeest. Around the same time, Blokland delved further into stone letter carving.
n 1990, he authored the book accompanying the Teleac course Calligraphy: The Art of Beautiful Writing, which sold 16,000 copies. That same year, he founded the Dutch Type Library (DTL). Since 1987, he has been a faculty member at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, teaching writing, lettering, type design, and font production in the Graphic Design department. Since 1995, Blokland has also been a senior lecturer and researcher at the Plantin Institute.
Blokland has spoken at numerous international conferences, including TYPO Labs and ATypI events. In the late 1990s, he initiated and organized the development of DTL FontMaster, advanced software for professional digital font production. Among his typeface designs are DTL Documenta Sans and DTL Haarlemmer (based on drawings by Jan van Krimpen).
In 2016, he defended his dissertation at Leiden University, testing the hypothesis that Gutenberg and his Renaissance colleagues developed a highly standardized system for the production of textura type, which was subsequently extrapolated for the development of roman type. In 2022, Blokland received the Laureateship Honoris Causa from the Plantin Institute.
