News

In the second number of 2016, Monocle magazine has published a well informed article telling the story of the Amsterdamse Krulletter’s origins and our efforts for preserving and reviving the tradition. Thanks a lot to Marie-Sophie Schwarzer and ‪Monocle’s team for bringing attention to this topic. Thanks also a lot to Studio Bar and Jasper Andries from Amsterdam Signpainters for your design inputs and hard work.
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Few months ago the identity agency Design Bridge Amsterdam contacted us for an assignment. Their office was recently renovated and – in accordance with their appreciation for local crafts and traditions – they wanted to recreate Amsterdam’s curly letter in a series of words to be painted on the doors of their meeting rooms.
Design Bridge Amsterdam’s building was once a stable. As a nod to this history each meeting room was named after a horse breed: Chesnut, Bay, Roan, St … > Read article

Becky Chilcott from Chil3 has amused us again with a beautifully designed book by author and journalist Susan Maushart. This Little World is Perth’s Presbyterian Ladies’ College (PLC) centenary book. Although it has a fairly formal structure in terms of its 11 chapters, every page engages the viewer with different standout images, stories and factoids. The spirit of camaraderie, innovation and achievement are strong elements throughout the book in line with PLC’s 100 year h … > Read article

Simone Massoni is an Italian illustrator with a deep appreciation for typography. He runs the website chicksandtypes.com where he likes to pay homage to some of his favorite fonts. In past months well known typefaces like Meta, Archer and Matrix – among others, have been interpreted pairing each font with the illustration of a sensual woman that – in Massoni’s view – embodies the typeface’s attributes.
Last month it was the turn of our font Tomate and Massoni cr … > Read article

Few days ago Ramiro was invited by Design Bridge Amsterdam to talk about his research on the curly script of Amsterdam and how vernacular letters can be used in contemporary identity systems. Many thanks to Zayne Dagher, Marguerite Rubens and the rest of the Design Bridge team for a wonderful evening.
More information: http://www.designbridge.com/at-the-bar-with-ramiro-espinoza/
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Ramiro Espinoza has recently delivered a workshop on sketching ‪Krulletters‬ at Amsterdam Signpainters’s headquarter. Drawing letters is hard work but at the end of the day, all sketches looked much more refined. We hope the AS team enjoyed it and that soon they will be able to draw and paint krulletters as good as the ones produced by Visser and Beukeboom.
Here you can see some images of the workshop.

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We are fans of the Amsterdam School and at least once a year we pay a visit to Het Schip, the museum dedicated to this avant-garde movement.
Last time we were there, we found this fine publication dedicated to the architect Eduard Cuypers. Its designer, Joep Pohlen from Polka Design chose Kurversbrug as the cover and headlines typeface and of course we think it was the right decision. 🙂

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Emergo is an interesting report on Amsterdam organized crime published by Boom Publishers. The book was designed by René van der Hooren making intensive use of our font family Krurversbrug. Much appreciated, René. We love to see book designers making good use of our fonts.

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Another great project using Kurversbrug: Sander Pappot from Zender.nu studio has redesigned the identity of the Amsterdam’s club Wester Unie and the new image looks wonderful!
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In this post at Behance you can take a look to some of the steps in the production of a recent lettering based logo. We used a copperplate style with some traits typic of the Amsterdamse krulletter
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Thanks a lot to Jaap Biemans and de Volkskrant’s design team for choosing our font Krul for this beautiful spread in the Volkskrant’s magazine. It looks gorgeous.
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Many thanks to Yves Peters for the thorough review of De Amsterdamse Krulletter published in Fontshop’s weblog.
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The beautiful lettering painted on the windows of Café “Het Molenpad” was one of the first works with “Amsterdamse Krulletters” I could identify and photograph back in 2004. “Het Molenpad” is on the Prinsengracht, separated a few meters from the location of the building were the Public Library used to be located. Two or three years later, I started to be more systematic and take pictures of every window with krulletters, so I came back to this … > Read article

As every year we have made a Flickr’s album with pictures of KAKB’s Type and Media 2014/15 graduation projects: https://www.flickr.com/photos/retype/sets/72157654986009899
Enjoy!
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We have to admit we are terribly flattered by the very positive double page review of De Amsterdamse Krulletter that Bob Witman has published in De Volkskrant.
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In the last weeks we have been busy making a number of lettering works in the style of the Amsterdamse Krulletters for some of our clients. Some will be printed and others will be hand painted by colleague sign painters. If you need a similar project, don’t hesitate in contacting us.
You can take a look to the complete set at our Behance account.

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Ramiro has recently given a workshop introducing to copperplate calligraphy to the Amsterdam Sign Painters Guild. It was a great Saturday spent among home made walnut ink, oblique holders and vintage pointed nibs. Thanks to the ASG crew for the hospitality and the great company! (More pictures of the even can be seen at in Flickr’s account.)
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Our typeface Laski Slab –designed by Paula Mastrangelo & Ramiro Espinoza – has been awarded with the highest prize of the Hiii Typography contest. Needless to say we feel deeply honored for receiving it. Thanks a lot to the jury and congratulations to the rest of the winers.
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What are the origins of the exuberant swash letters that can be found on the windows of many of Amsterdam’s most traditional bars? Who painted them? Was it a collective creation, or the work of a lone gifted sign painter? How old is this style?
For almost a decade Ramiro Espinoza thoroughly researched the refined, swirling lettering style, examining every surviving example in Amsterdam, Maastricht and Ghent in an effort to answer these questions. He compiled his findings in De A … > Read article

Kerning fonts is a tiring activity that can put a big stress on your extremities. Following the advice given at Robothon conference by Andy Clymer, we are experimenting using MetricsMachine and an USB’s game pad with the help of the universal driver USB Overdrive. It works like a charm. We specially like to have a handy way to flip the selected pair when checking kerning symmetry. The next kerning work at Retype is much probably going to be performed with this method.
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‘De Amsterdamse Krulletter’ files have been delivered to the publisher and the book will be available approximately in one month. The book will be presented on 8 of April at the Bijzondere Collecties’s building in Amsterdam.

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Le Guess Who is a music festival for independent music such as noise rock, indie rock, IDM, held in Utrecht, Netherlands. Some months ago they began using Kurversbrug as its main typeface for posters, website and their Treasure Guide publication. All designs by Loudmouth.

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“De Amsterdamse Krulletter“, an exhaustive research about the Amsterdam’s Curly Letter by Ramiro Espinoza and Rob Becker will be published by Lecuris.nl in April/2015. Stay tuned for news about the book presentation.
Click here for more information.
“De Amsterdamse Krulletter” can be purchased following this link
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Our friend Donald Beekman from Studio DBXL has designed with our font Krul a beautiful campaign for Mooie Noten, Amsterdam’s singer-songwriter competition. Great job, Donald!
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We have been experimenting with our friends of BunkerType with a wood type version of Kurversbrug, the revival of Amsterdam’s bridge letters. We chose a fragment of a famous poem by Jan Campert (“Een Amsterdamsch lied”) and with it a poster in the spirit of The Amsterdam School avant-garde was designed and printed. Stay tuned, the poster will be made available soon.

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Our typeface Laski Slab has been generously featured in the Japanese magazine Typography #6. It’s a well designed publication with a careful selection of recently published typefaces and related news on typography. Thanks a lot to Yuko Miyago and his team.

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With our colleagues from Bunker Type we are planning a wood type version of Kurversbrug. Soon this new incarnation of the Amsterdam’s bridge letters (brugletter) will be ready and a set of posters dedicated to the city will be printed with them. Stay tuned for more news!

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Few months ago we shared here some outstanding posters Richard Wolfströme designed with our Kade typeface. Now he has employed Laski Slab to design Here and Now, a magazine for The Academy of Urbanism. We think it is a beautiful piece of editorial design and we are glad our type family is playing an important rol in it. As always, thanks Richard for sharing your work with us.

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As every year the Bijzondere Collecties department of the University of Amsterdam is organizing the Type Amsterdam event. In this opportunity, the lectures will delivered by: Nina Stoessinger, Sébastien Morlighem, Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès and Ron van Roon.
You can subscribe in this webpage, but don’t wait too much since the venue has a rather limited capacity.
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Thanks a lot to the staff of Slanted Magazine for featuring our Laski Slab family in the “Contemporary Typefaces” section.

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On this Sunday 16 of November there will be a workshop organized by TypeCrit Amsterdam and hosted at the Grafisch Werkplaats Amsterdam oriented toward creating custom 3D printed block letters. It will be a very good opportunity to learn more about letterpress printing and use the equipment kept in the workshop. Don’t miss it!: http://www.meetup.com/TypeCrit-Amsterdam/events/208205692/

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Kurversbrug – our interpretation of the idiosyncratic alphabet found on the bridges in Amsterdam – was the first type family released by Retype back in 2007. From the onset the Kurversbrug typefaces were very well received, and have been applied in countless design projects, websites and advertising campaigns. Even the Amsterdam municipality started using Kurversbrug in a new series of bridge nameplates. This made us realize a revamp of the family was necessary, so we began wo … > Read article

We were very pleased to find that Berry Slok Studio from Amsterdam chose our script font Dulcinea to design the poster, brochures and catalogue of the Hermitage Museum‘s exhibition ‘Dining with the Tsars’. It looks great, we hope to see soon more works from this studio.

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Chil3 is an Australian design studio that creates stunning works of identity and editorial design. They have recently designed the identity for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and have chosen David Quay’s Kade as its main typeface. We love how it looks in the context of this solid design work.

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We have recently worked with Renee Ramraj creating a font for the G-Star’s campaign ‘Raw for the oceans’. The alphabet plays an important part in this identity where it must reaffirm the messages behind the environmentally-conscious initiative.

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For those who like to check what the students from the Type & Media Master make every year, we’ve uploaded to our Flickr account a set of images of their graduation projects. Alternatively you can also take a look to the pictures we posted in our Instagram account.
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Finnish designer Tom Backström from mustakirahvi.net has designed this stunning book jacket with our typeface Winco. It looks great Tom, thanks a lot for letting us know about it!
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For those type lovers who prefer the smell of printed specimens, we’ve made a Laski Slab booklet displaying every weight and showing their potential with a variety of design examples. It can be ordered here.
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It is the second occasion in this year that one of our fonts receive an award. This time Medusa, our revival of the Catalonian writing master Ramón Stirling, has been awarded with a “Certificate of Excellence” by the New York’s Type Director Club. Thanks a lot to the jury for considering us, we are immensely flattered.

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Richard Wolfströme is an award-winning graphic designer based on Brighton (UK). He has used our Kade family to design a set of very effective posters for “The Dowsing Sound Collective” – a dynamic 120-voice choir and band. You can also take a look to his Behance, it’s full of gorgeous works.

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Bas van Vuurde is a talented graphic designer and typographer who runs a studio in the city on Haarlem. He has recently designed a graphic identity for “De Vrijplaats” (a rehabilitation center). We are glad to see again Kade as one of the central elements of a very well balanced identity.

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ReType Foundry proudly introduces Laski Slab, a comprehensive suite of 20 fonts conceived for editorial purposes. The type family was designed by Paula Mastrangelo, an Art Director with extensive experience in editorial design specialized in corporate communication. Originally developed for an online children’s magazine, Laski was expanded into a multipurpose type family with the technical assistance of Ramiro Espinoza.
Belying the intrinsic robustness of the slab serif genre, L … > Read article

The Amsterdam School Museum in Amsterdam has published a beautiful book featuring our font Kurversbrug in the cover and titles. The book, designed by Rutger Vos, is dedicated to one of its more important milestones: Het Schip (The Ship). This building marks the highest point of socialhousing in the Netherlands. There, workers were not only provided with good quality accommodation, but they were also given a beautiful home. So, if you ever travel to Amsterdam, forget about silly … > Read article

We have published a project at Behance covering our latest Medusa script in depth. Check it out, there are great new images of Medusa in use. The rest of ReType projects can be found here.
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We are pleased to share that the website Graphicdesign.com has published a nice article/interview on Medusa and other ReType’s typefaces.
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Our script Krul has been chosen among “Best of 2012” typefaces by Typographica.org. This is one of the most important type design prizes and we are exultant. And Winco and Dulcinea are also listed as “Honorable mentions”. Thanks to Laura Messeguer for reviewing and Typographica’s team for the support.
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New from ReType, Medusa is Ramiro Espinoza’s homage to one of the most renowned masters of Spanish calligraphy, Ramón Stirling, who was active in Barcelona during the 19th century. Not much is known about his life, and there is even some doubt as to his real name, but his Bellezas de la Caligrafía (Beauties of Calligraphy) is one of the most exquisite English roundhand manuals ever produced.

The starting-off point in the creation of the typeface was an analysis of the histor … > Read article

Ramiro Espinoza has just been interviewed by Myfonts. I you want to know a little more over ReType, follow this link.
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Next week is Type Amsterdam 2012. We are very exited and – certainly – a bit nervous 🙂
See you on Thursday.
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Dulcinea is the title of Ramiro Espinoza’s in-depth look at Spanish Baroque calligraphy’s most extreme tendencies, and especially at some of those produced by the writing masters Pedro Díaz Morante and Juan Claudio Aznar de Polanco. These 17th and 18th centuries alphabets with their plentiful calligraphic flourishes represented a marked break with the harmonic and angular Renaissance Cancellaresca style.
It was Morante who first introduced and popularized the use of the poin … > Read article