Comments of the jury
Dawn Barrett (chair)
First a comment about the ‘language and media’ theme devised by the board for the jury of Charles Nypels Award 2000. Specifying media or language seems dangerously close to stating the inherent qualities of typography itself, and does not immediately suggest criteria for measuring innovation. By giving an explicit directive to consider the relationship of language with its medium (whether old or new) was a means of consciously addressing how this interaction works itself out in the arena of typography. It was also the intention to prompt a debate on how cultural and technical systems of media and language might currently influence typographic invention. Rather than narrowing the range of nominations; the ‘language and media’ theme actually diversified the scope of candidates, but did tend to privilege typographic work of a strong conceptual basis rather than that with a primarily stylistic or utilitarian nature.
Choosing LettError as the recipient of the oeuvre prize Charles Nypels Award 2000 was the jury's recognition that, in addition to the consistent quality, craftsmanship and independence of their typographic innovation; the approach of Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland is one where language and media are so conceptually united that one might quip that in their work, ‘the language is the medium’.
LettError does not restrict itself to either the making of typefaces or to the design of typography. Van Blokland and Van Rossum are instead occupied with the entire gambit, focusing on the interactive middle ground where letterforms perform typography: letters are actors on a stage of typographic plays — a theater of sorts where one letter says to another: ‘Is that why they call us characters?’
LettError's work is fundamentally programmatic. Instead of a making-process that works towards a final product, their approach systemically programs a sequence of forms, actions and variable consequences. Instead of making things, they make things that act (often in the service of making other things, which also tend to be active). For instance, instead of making a type specimen to display the typeface Federal, LettError created a ‘specimen maker’ which formally displays the face, but also contains in its parameters reference points to its historical provenance as well as to its variable physical characteristics.
Lastly, a word about humor and LettError's use of the comic. The persistent, jesting irreverence is agreeable and even endearing because it manifests itself in a playfulness that is daring, and also highly productive. The particular form of wit and irreverence is one that actually expresses itself in an abiding respect for the parameters and rules implicit in the current technical, cultural and professional context, and which have to be well understood before they can be played with.
If play is a daring extension of one's reach into unknown, but learnable, worlds — LettError performs this by stretching their hands directly into the black box of technology and daring to jump back and forth through that fear-inspiring, no-go zone of programming.
Honoring the Charles Nypels Prize, awarding outstanding typographic innovation and experimentation, the jury singled out the work of LettError for the intelligence, independence and playful daring of their work. The approach of LettError is one that not only welcomes such diverting, hypothetical questions as ‘I wonder if...’ but they are actually inspired by the supposition ‘Why not?’. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, LettError derive enough motivation for committed professional follow-through in answering a pressing curiosity to ‘do it to see what happens.’
Max Bruinsma
What is the language of the medium? It's scripted! Any pixel on the screen can be told to follow directions. There's nothing permanent on the screen. This basic insight into the nature of computer based media is at the root of LettError's experimental type designs. They have introduced fonts with not just character, but with attitudes and behaviors. Playful, cheerful and irreverent, LettError are nonetheless steeped in a revered tradition of Dutch typographic design. Type, as a more or less abstract repertoire of signs and forms, has been a major inspiration to such founding fathers of Dutch graphic design as Piet Zwart, Paul Schuitema and designer/printer Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman. LettError's manipulations with letters and type — sometimes beyond readability — give new energy to this tradition of dynamised typography. LettError focus on the rules of the game: the code and scripts that determine how letterforms will behave on the screen.
Gerard Hadders
...LettError is seditious enough to give color to the faded image of internet as a formal innovator. An ironic element is that the expression chosen by LettError betrays a nostalgia for the printed medium in the last stage of its progress: the newspaper. This is where the graphic forms of typography and cartoon flourish...
...The paper called LettError is one that can, or even has to be, ‘shaken’ to prevent the text from running off the paper or reshaping to form a completely different content. When you start to read an article about the latest crime of Saddam Hussein, the columns of text gradually take on a depth profile of Claudia Cardinale. ‘Shaking’ only prevents this to some extent. If you start at Saddam Hussein, at best you will end up at the price of a bunch of tomatoes...
...The advertisement pages of the paper called LettError are unruly. Where technology can be easily turned into a smoothly running supply system, the editors set out deliberately to block e-commerce. The future of capitals and lower case is smothered to death over their heads in the interest of their next of kin: mutants that it will be impossible to label as letter or cartoon, but at most as drawing...
...The material on which the paper is printed is unusual as well. The letters adhere to timid material. Imagine a letter to the editor on a streak of lightning, or a fossil drawn on the northern lights. The reader is supposed to be confused by all this. After all, the readers have to dot the ‘i’s themselves...
...The editors are in the best tradition of the Enlightenment. Like Jonathan Swift in eighteenth-century England, they are writers, artists, typographers, scientific researchers, and entrepreneurs — an unprecedented range of activities in the Netherlands, at least for ‘graphic designers’. And as in the case of Swift, the most ‘distributed’ aspect of these qualities will soon determine whether it was plausible to give this award in the year 2000 for typography or for economic reorganization...
...The paper called LettError is exemplary as a progressive medium. It is seductive and eloquent. Its forms are human and outspoken. Its look is that of an unmade bed. Its case lines tremble and entwine lovingly like orchids. Its typography swallows up the reader relentlessly and settles its own proliferation...
...The anarchistic calling of internet was stifled long ago under the mumbling about rights and the jingling of credit card numbers. LettError has formulated an answer to this for which we can cite Ulrike Meinhof: ‘...blowing up a shop is as criminal as owning one...’...
Pierre di Sciullo
Can you imagine a typographic font called VanVanRossumBlokland or BloklandRossumVanVan? If working as a twosome and having a double-barreled surname complicates things on the telephone, at least it protects you from a ridiculous affectation widespread among power-mad typographers: calling a typeface by your own name. Erik and Just have made do with their Christian names. This shows greater human warmth and, above all, conveys a simple message. ‘This typeface is produced as a stabilized form of my own handwriting.’ ‘I'd go further, Erik, and say that this typeface is produced as stabilized form of my own handwriting.’ If these scripts — and other typefaces of theirs — have invaded our environment, this is not part of a deliberate plan to rule the whole world by creating signs that show the way the wind is blowing. No, just part of the world will do — let's say, wherever there's a Macintosh — and let the wind follow if it can. Mockery is a very serious weapon. What is this illuminated box you can also use to write with? How does it work? What's it for? How can you push a top-of-the-range printer to the verge of a nervous breakdown? Why design new letters when you can drive the computer insane and have it design them itself — and jump out of the window afterwards? This, roughly speaking, is the LeTTeReRRoR, LettError project, and up there in their lookout post the exploration of contemporary signs continues apace.
Teal Triggs
Batman, Iron Man, Marvelman, Sandman, Superman, Spider-Man and now TypoMan! The latter, an animated character created by LettError, exploits the language of popular comic books through a skilful combination of words, pictures, and timing. The narratives appear stylishly simple, yet playfully engage the viewer by focussing on the extraordinary encounters of an ordinary superhero. (In one tale, TypoMan meets his adversary — Crocodile — and they battle it out amongst the city streets.) At the same time, LettError uses the territory of the familiar — transferring marks made by more conventional mediums such as the typewriter, handwriting, rubber stamps, and stencil forms into typefaces appropriately called FF Trixie, FF Hands, FF SchulSchrift, and FF Karton. LettError's recently released font LTR Federal, uses digital technology to replicate the historical shading characteristic of nineteenth century engraved type. The marks of these mediums are well known and for LettError, are successfully used to foster a more accessible typographic language. Ironically though, it is their innovative use of digital technology and their development of scripts and code which underpin the conventions of a popular visual language.