Jan van Krimpen

Jan van Krimpen (Gouda, 12 February 1892 – Haarlem, 20 October 1958) was a Dutch typographer and type designer. He worked for the printing house Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé.

Type designs

Haarlemmer, a text typeface designed by Van Krimpen in 1938.

Spectrum, a text typeface designed by Van Krimpen between 1941 and 1943.

Van Krimpen's type designs are elegant book typefaces, originally made for manual printing and the monotype machine. Although a good few have been digitised (Romulus, Haarlemmer, Spectrum), the typefaces are only rarely used in publications.

Of special note is the Romulus 'superfamily', consisting of a seriffed font, a cursive, a chancery italic (Cancelleresca Bastarda), a sans-serif, and a Greek in a range of weights. Such an extensive family would have been a first, comparable to today's Scala family. The outbreak of the Second World War disrupted the project before completion. After the war, Van Krimpen was not interested in resuming it.

Foundry Type

These foundry types were designed by Jan van Krimpen:

• Lutetia (1925, Enschedé Foundry, also 1928 Monotype)
• Romanée (1928-1949, Enschedé Foundry)
• Open Roman Capitals (1929, Enschedé Foundry)
• Romulus type family
  • Romulus (1931, Enschedé Foundry, also 1936 Monotype)
  • Cancelleresca Bastarda (1934, Enschedé Foundry)
  • Romulus Sans
  • Romulus Greek
• Van Dijck Roman (1935, Monotype)
• Haarlemmer (1938, Monotype)
• Sheldon (1947)
• Spectrum (1952 Enschedé Foundry, also 1955 Monotype)

References

• J. van Krimpen, On designing and devising type (New York: The Typophiles 1957).
• R. Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style 3rd ed. (Vancouver Hartley & Marks: 2004).
• http://www.dutchtypelibrary.nl/VanKrimpen_rdrct.html
• Jan Middendorp, "Dutch Type" (010 Publishers, 2004) (pages 54-64)