Jan van Krimpen

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Jan van Krimpen (Gouda, Feb 12, 1892 – Haarlem, Oct 20, 1958) was a Dutch typographer and type designer. He worked for printing house Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé.

[edit] Type designs

Van Krimpen's type designs are elegant book typefaces, originally made for manual printing and the monotype machine. Although a good few have been digitised (Romulus, Haarlemmer, Spectrum), the typefaces are only rarely used in publications.

Of special note is the Romulus 'superfamily', consisting of a seriffed font, a cursive, a chancery italic (Cancelleresca Bastarda), a sans-serif, and a Greek in a range of weights. Such an extensive family would have been a first, comparable to today's Scala family. The outbreak of the Second World War disrupted the project before completion. After the war, Van Krimpen was not interested in resuming it.

  • Lutetia (1923-25)
  • Antigone (Greek)
  • Romanée (1928)
  • Romulus
  • Cancelleresca Bastarda
  • Romulus Sans
  • Romulus Greek
  • Haarlemmer (1938)
  • Spectrum (1941-1943)
  • Sheldon

[edit] References