OurType is Fred Smeijers' web site and foundry established in 2002. The venture was started in cooperation with Rudy Geerarts of FontShop Benelux, and today also includes Corina Cotorobai. He is the Dutch designer (b. 1961) of many seminal type designs. Here is a list.

• The huge (and growing) text family Quadraat (1998-2001).
• Renard (at Enschedé, after letters by Hendrik van den Keere, 1998; see discussion here).
• DTL Nobel (with Andrea Fuchs, 1993, at the Dutch Type Library). Not to be confused with the geometric sans family Nobel, also created in 1993, by Tobias Frere-Jones (Font Bureau).
• Arnhem (1998-2002) and Arnhem Fine, which are historically related to the Romain du roi. These were developed in collaboration with Werkplaats Typografie (Karel Martens and Wigger Bierma)---Andy Crewdson provides an insightful discussion of it.
• Fresco (1998), Fresco Sans, Fresco Condensed, Fresco Informal, Fresco Informal Sans, Fresco Script (+Sans), Fresco Plus, a work horse of a family at OurType.
• Ludwig (2010), modeled after the 19-th century grotesks.
• Monitor (2000-2004, a sans family at OurType). Not to be confused with earlier commercial typefaces with the same name, like Henryk Sawanda's Monitor (1975-1980) or BB&S's Monitor No. 5 (1890s).
• Eva (an informal sans, done with Merel Matzinger at OurType).
• The sans family Sansa (2005, OurType) was followed by Sansa Slab and Sansa Soft in 2006. Sansa and Arnhem are available from FontShop since 2005.
• In 2002, OurType created the gorgeous Custodia family for use in publications of the Custodia Foundation. The typeface is called Custodia 17 because it was inspired by 17th century Dutch styles. Peter Gabor and Jonathan Munn claim that Custodia is too close to Monotype Van Dijck. It is very close, yes, but there is much less contrast, and that seems to have needed a lot of careful thinking. Gabor and Munn are particularly upset because the OurType page does not mention this Van Dijck connection.
• Denda new (2000), a family made specially for Canon. In his book, Type Now, Fred Smeijers says: A contemporary sanserif initiated in 2000 by TBWA\Designers Company for their redesign of Canon Europe packaging. This typeface comes in four weights, in roman and matching italics: for use by Canon Europe in general publicity, manuals, and packaging. It is a custom-made design, not publicly available.
• Puncho (2012) by Fred Smeijers is based on stencil letter punches made by S.M. Spencer of Boston.

FontShop link. Author of Counterpunch: making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now, London, Hyphen Press, 1996, and Type Now: A Manifesto. In February 2001, Smeijers received the (second) Gerrit Noordzij Award 2000 (an initiative of the post-graduate department Type&Media at the Royal Academy in The Hague in cooperation with the Museum Meermanno). Author of Type Now (2003, reviewed by John Berry). OurType's offices are in DePinte, Belgium. Speaker on historical stencil forms at ATypI 2006 in Lisbon. Currently he also is professor of digital media and Dean at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig. Speaker at ATypI 2011 in Reykjavik.

EXTERNAL LINKS
OurType
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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Dutch type design ⦿ Books on type design ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ The Belgian type scene ⦿

Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html