Fred Smeijers (Eindhoven, 1961) is a Dutch graphic, type designer and writer. He studied at the ArtEZ Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem in the early 1980s.
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After his graduation, Smeijers worked for Océ - a Dutch manufacturer of printing and copying hardware. Between 1986 and 1990, he worked at the Océ's industrial design department as a typographic advisor, designing typefaces for early laser printers. In the mid-80s Smeijers started to develop an interest in the early 16th century technique of punchcutting. The insights he acquired from these experiments influence the way he designs typefaces. This is the most apparent in his typeface FF Quadraat, a classic book typeface with interesting details. Other Smeijers' retail typefaces are FF Quadraat Sans and FF Quadraat Mono (FSI FontShop International), Renard (The Enschedé Font Foundry), Nobel (co-designed with Andrea Fuchs for Dutch Type Library), Arnhem, Fresco, Custodia, Sansa, Monitor, and Ludwig (OurType) - the foundry he set-up with Rudy Geeraerts in 2002. Smeijers has also designed custom typefaces and iconic logos for Philips, Canon-Europe and TomTom, among others. Smeijers is a research fellow at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Professor of Type Design at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig and at the Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague.
In 2000 he received the prestigious Gerrit Noordzij Prize, awarded by The Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague to honor innovations in type design and outstanding contribution to type education.[1]
Smeijers is the creative director of OurType and author of Counterpunch and Type Now for Hyphen Press, London.