Albert-Jan Pool

Biography

Interview  [ to be announced ]

After studying at KABK in The Hague with Gerrit Noordzij, Albert left for Hamburg in 1987 to work in the type industry. In 1994 he started his studio Dutch Design which specializes in typography and corporate design. He designed typefaces ever since, the most famous being FF DIN which he did for FontShop (now Monotype) in 1995. It is the first, famous and most faithful revival of the lettering models from the German standard DIN 1451 for public signage. Over time, he extended FF DIN with many weights, styles, language support and script systems such as Cyrillic and Greek. Major steps in that process were the release of FF DIN Round in 2010 and FF DIN Arabic in 2016. With Achaz Reuss and Antonia Cornelius he extended the family with FF DIN Stencil and FF DIN Slab which were aso released as Variable Fonts in 2022 together with FF DIN Variable. Until recently, he taught typeface design at the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel and currently advises on legibility in the context of inclusive design. His latest typeface family is Altona, it preserves the beautiful, idiosyncratic letters of 1920s street signs found in the Altona district of Hamburg. He designed it with Julia Uplegger and Antonia Cornelius who contributed with a range of icons relating to the history and spirit of Altona.

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