TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Apr 15 05:29:10 EDT 2024

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LUC DEVROYE

ABOUT

LucasFonts (and: FontFabrik) [Lucas de Groot]

Luc(as) de Groot (b. 1962, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands) studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Den Haag and worked from 1989-1993 as a freelancer at the design bureau Premsela Voonk. From 1993 until 1997, he was with Meta Design in Berlin as typographic director in charge of many corporate design projects. In 1997, he set up FontFabrik and in 2000 LucasFonts in Berlin. He creates retail and custom fonts, and made his reputation with his humongous font family Thesis. Originally, he published most of his retail fonts with FontFont, but his "FF" fonts were withdrawn from FontFont in 1999, and renamed with LF instead of FF, where LF stands for LucasFonts. His most popular typefaces include Thesis (the superfamily that includes TheSans, TheSerif, TheMix and The Antiqua), Calibri (a default font at Microsoft), Sun, Taz and Corpid. He is also well-nown for his Anisotropic Topology-Dependent Interpolation theory which roughly states that a 50% interpolation is not the optical middle between two weights. He teaches type design at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam, Germany. His typefaces:

• Agrofont (1997, for the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries) and Agro Sans, developed in collaboration with the Dutch design bureau Studio Dumbar.
• BellSouth Basis, Serif and Bold, developed with Dutchman Roger van den Bergh.
• BolletjeWol (1997, Fontshop).
• Calibri. Done for Microsoft, Calibri is the default typeface in MS Word. Calibri received a TypeArt 05 award and won an award at the TDC2 2005 type competition. For a yet-to-be-revealed reason, Google decided to support a metric-compatible free clone of Calibri for its Chrome OS system, Lukasz Dziedzic's Carlito (2014). Calibri became the standard font for all Microsoft 365 apps, but will be replaced some time in 2021 by one of five candidates, Bierstadt (by Steve Matteson), Grandview (by Aaron Bell), Seaford (by Tobias Frere-Jones, Nina Stössinger, and Fred Shallcrass), Skeena (by John Hudson and Paul Hanslow) or Tenorite (by Erin McLaughlin and Wei Huang).
• Consolas. Done for Microsoft, this typeface was intended as a successor for Courier.
• Corpid III (2002-2007). A sans family with support for Cyrillic, Greek and Turkish.
• Floris (a ball terminal text typeface in 18 styles, Floris was developed on a four-dimensional grid of several axes or parameters: weight, width, x-height and ascender/descender height).
• Fohla Serif (2001). Designed for a Brazilian newspaper in Sao Paulo. This collection includes a multiple master font, FohlaMM.
• FF Jesus Loves You all, now LF Jesus Loves You all.
• Koning (2017), co-designed by Luc(as) de Groot, Martina Flor, Jan Fromm, Phillipp Neumeyer and Daria Petrova. Koning won an award at TDC Typeface Design 2018. The first retail release of this flared typeface family came in 2019: Koning Display (a 20 style sans with Peignotian traits and occasionally, flared terminals).
• LucPicto (dingbats for private use at FontFabrik). Not available to the world.
• LeMonde (2002, new headline family). An OEM family made for LeMonde in 2001 includes Lucas-Bold, Lucas-BoldItalic, Lucas-ExtraLight, Lucas-ExtraLightItalic, Lucas-Italic, Lucas-Light, Lucas-LightItalic, Lucas-SemiBold, Lucas-SemiBoldItalic, Lucas.
• MetaPlus (1993, with Erik Spiekermann).
• MoveMeMM (erotic multiple master font)
• FF Nebulae, now LF Nebulae.
• LF Punten: Punten Straight, Punten Extremo and Punten Rondom.
• Spiegel and Spiegel Sans, originally designed for Der Spiegel. The retail versions are called Spiegel Sans (a 32 style American gothic family) and LF Spiegel Serif.
• Sun (1997, for Sun Microsystems) later became a retail font, also called Sun, a 28-style humanist compact sans typeface in the genre of industrial era American newspaper headlines.
• LF Taz (sans family, 2002), Taz III (2003, including a hairline weight) and Taz Text (for "taz", the magazine), sans typefaces designed for use in newspapers. Are these the same fonts as Tazzer and Tazzer Text? Taz has grown as follows: TazText, Taz Condensed (2010), Taz Text Small Caps (2011), Taz Wide (2013-2014), Taz Textended (2013-2014). By 2021, the Taz family contained 128 styles.
• Thesis (1994-1999) originally known as FF Thesis. This consists of many subfamilies all starting with the prefix The. MyFonts links for the Thesis family: TheAntiqua, TheMix, TheSans, TheSerif. Thesis includes
  • LF TheAntiqua (a 14-style medium contrast oldstyle typeface), LF TheAntiquaSun, Qua Text (a newstext version of TheAntiqua developed in close collaboration with the Berlin newspaper Die Tages­zeitun taz), TheAntiquaB (1997; 1999 Type Directors Club award), TheAntiquaE, TheAntiquaSun. TheAntiqua received a TypeArt 05 award.
  • LF TheMix (69 styles: semi-serif), TheMix Mono (48 styles; a monospaced version of TheMix), The Mix Classic, The Mix Basic, The Mix Office. TheMix is part of the Thesis superfamily. It originated as an alphabet for the logotypes of the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management drawn by Luc(as) while working at BRS Premsela Vonk in Amsterdam. The alphabet later became the starting point of the entire Thesis system.
  • Thesis Mono.
  • LF TheSans, The Sans Classic, The Sans Basic, The Sans Office, The Sans Condensed, The Sans Mono (48 styles), The Sans Mono Dc, The Sans Mono 11pitch, The Sans Mono Cd Office, The Sans Typewriter (a monospaced and grungy version of TheSans). First published in 1994 as a descendant of Franklin Gothic, The Sans is a modern classic.
  • LF TheSerif (52 styles), The Serif Classic, The Serif Basic, The Serif Office. TheSerif is part of the Thesis superfamily. The Serif's ancestors include Linotype Rotation.
  • The Stencil (2021).
  • SPD 2002 TheSans. An OEM for the SPD party.
  • Grundfos TheSans (2007).Another commissioned font.
• Transit and Transit Pict (both at FontShop).
• Volkswagen Headline and Volkswagen Copy (1996), extensions of Futura. Note: the other Volkswagen house font is VW Utopia, a descendant of Utopia.

DeGroot designed custom fonts for newspapers such as Folha de S.Paulo, Le Monde, Metro, Der Spiegel, taz.die tageszeitung, Freitag and Jungle World. In addition, he created corporate type for international companies such as Sun Microsystems, Bell South, Heineken, Volkswagen and Miele.

Speaker at many international conferences. At ATypI 2015 in Sao Paulo, he spoke about his Folha Sao Paulo newspaper typeface.

In 2021, LucasFonts joined Type Network.

FontShop link. Klingspor link. I Love Typography link. View the typeface library at Lucasfonts. View Lucas de Groot's typefaces.

EXTERNAL LINKS
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INTERNAL LINKS
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