Just van Rossum

Just van Rossum (born 1966 in Haarlem) is a Dutch typeface designer, software developer, and professor at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. He is the co-founder of design firm, LettError, along with Erik van Blokland. Just van Rossum is the younger brother of Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language.

Early life and education Just van Rossum was born and raised in the Netherlands alongside his brother Guido and his sister Saskia. The ZX81's primary function was to allow the user to write programs in BASIC. As a result, Van Rossum developed an understanding of computer science principles in his teenage years, an advantage that would influence his identity and philosophy as a designer.

During his stay at MetaDesign, Just's friend and fellow student, Erik van Blokland, was also hired as an intern after graduating in 1989. While working together in Berlin, the two interns began theorizing about potential innovations in typeface design, culminating in their joint publishing of an indie magazine in that same year titled: LettError. The magazine primarily consists of editorials denouncing the overreliance on Bézier curves and the lack of innovation by typeface designers using PostScript. The LettError magazine encapsulated the anarchic and rebellious vision of its editors, containing layered and misaligned prints as well as sardonic fake adverts. One such advert describes a fictitious typography, textbook poking fun at their current employer (Spiekermann) and prior academic upbringing, a phony review exclaiming: "At Last a Book About Typography NOT Written By Erik Spiekermann". The magazine proposed the idea of a "Random Font" which would produce glyphs with unexpected variations upon every print, as opposed to the uniformity provided by a typical typeface.

LettError Borrowing the name from their previously published magazine, Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland formed a business partnership, referring to themselves collectively as LettError. It is a serif typeface and the first proof of concept of a "Random Font" as theorized by the duo in 1989. The programming behind the typeface effectively subverts Postscript standard practices by replacing standard commands with an original function written by Just and Erik. In Postscript, the commands "lineto" and "curveto" are used to draw lines and curves from one point towards another, forming the shape of the final glyph. The team wrote a new function, "freakto", which was similar to "lineto", with the key difference that the destination point would be randomly generated somewhere near the intended location. FF Beowolf is a modification made to the roman typeface, Kwadraat, where uses of "lineto" and "curveto" are replaced with "freakto". The result is a jagged, angular typeface that appears different every time it is printed.

FF Hands Returning from a type conference in 1990, Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland had the idea for their follow up to the success of FF Beowolf, the FF Hands series. FF Hands consisted of two fonts developed by scanning and digitizing alphabets handwritten by each designer. Aptly, these typefaces were named FF Justlefthand and FF Erikrighthand, denoting the author of the original handwriting as well as their dominant hand. The FF Hands typefaces were the first fonts created by scanning handwriting.

Software

RoboFog In the early 1990s, Just van Rossum collaborated with Petr van Blokland (older brother of Erik van Blokland) to develop the RoboFog software. RoboFog was a software based primarily on the code of an older font editor called Fontographer. Just and Petr developed a python interpreter that would allow users to programmatically design and change the user interface themselves. The original Fontographer code soon became obsolete and the userbase of RoboFog moved away towards software such as FontLab.

DrawBot In 2003, Just van Rossum developed DrawBot, a macOS software for teaching typeface designers about programming. DrawBot consisted of a text editor that allowed the user to programmatically define shapes using simplified Python functions and a canvas that would display the compiled result of the code. It was later redesigned in 2013 by Frederik Berlaen (a star pupil of Just at KABK who graduated in 2007).

RoboFab In 1997, after a meeting with Just van Rossum, software designer, Yuri Yarmola, decided to integrate a Python interpreter into his font editor software, FontLab 4. Just van Rossum had previously worked on the software, RoboFog, which was a Python interpreter for the software Fontographer, which had since been succeeded in popularity by FontLab. Just van Rossum, Erik van Blokland, and Tal Lemming developed the RoboFab API which was used to help programmers with UI design in the newly Python programmable FontLab software. RoboFab made it easy for RoboFog developers to port over their code from Fontographer to FontLab. It's especially recommended for type designers, as a tool to inspect how the more recent font technologies, variable fonts and OpenType features perform in typefaces that are in the design/production phase.

Notable typefaces

FF Beowolf ITC Officina Serif (EF) Phaistos FF Beosans FF Justlefthand FF Advert FF Schulschrift FF Schulbuch FF Brokenscript FF Stamp Gothic FF Confidential FF Flightcase FF Karton FF Dynamoe FF Double Digits Twin