Hansje van halem biography of christopher

Back in 2005, I wrote ‘In Search of a Comprehensive Type Design Theory’, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek article in which I argued that ‘Type design [...] seems to resist attempts to establish an encompassing theory by its very nature.

Type design is not an intellectual activity, but relies on a gesture of the person and his ability to express it formally’. I had been teaching type design for a number of years, and the article was a reaction to student requests to reveal the ultimate truths about type, its fundamental rules and principles.

Type design is a series of personal discoveries built upon the collective memory of the profession. It is easy to acquire basic skills, but almost impossible to distil the vast diversity of type into a unified theory of type design.

That’s why I was eager to read Gerard Unger’s Theory of Type Design.

Unger (1942-2018), the venerable Dutch type designer, digital type pioneer and eyewitness to the technological shifts of the past five decades, w