Just van Rossum

Just van Rossum (born 13 July 1966, Haarlem) is a Dutch typeface designer and computer programmer.

Typeface design

Just van Rossum collaborated with fellow Dutch typographer Erik van Blokland to fuse programming and letterform design in a hack to the PostScript programming language. The result was the FF Beowolf typeface, the first dynamically generated typeface, which modified letterforms on the fly. Using a randomizing algorithm to generate different letter forms each time a letter was printed. FF Beowolf laid the foundation for the FontFont library.^[1]

Van Rossum’s FF Justlefthand was (as part of the FF Hands package) the first digital handwriting font ever, which caused in a global geographic extension of the type family. He also worked with Erik Spiekermann in developing the ITC Officina typeface, containing a sans and slab serif version.

List of faces designed by van Rossum

• FF Advert
• FF Beowolf (with Erik van Blokland)
• LTR Bodoni (with Erik van Blokland)
• FF Brokenscript
• FF Double Digits (with Manfred Klein)
• F Flixel
• FF Instant Types (incl. FF Confidential, FF Dynamoe, FF Flightcase, FF Karton, FF Stamp Gothic)
• FF Justlefthand (as part of FF Hands, see Alban Wilfrid Hédi López at awhlc.com)
• ITC Officina (with Erik Spiekermann)
• FB Phaistos (with David Berlow)
• FF Schulbuch
• FF Schulschrift
• FF Trixie (with Erik van Blokland)
• F What You Think (with Erik van Blokland)

Programming achievements

Notable achievements of Just van Rossum include:

• the IDE for MacPython, included in the standard Python distribution
• being the designer of the "Python Powered" logo font used on Python websites around the Internet
• creating the FontTools open source Python library for manipulating fonts
• creating the TTX open source tool (based on FontTools) for converting OpenType and TrueType fonts from their native formats to XML, and back

Personal life

Just van Rossum is the brother of Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python computer programming language.

References

Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to Opentype. Hartley & Marks Publishers, Inc.: 2006. ISBN 0-88179-210-1.

External links

• LettError, Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland’s typography partnership.
• Overview of Just van Rossum’s typefaces,
• Just’s page at python.net
• Python Powered logo page