Erik van Blokland (born 1967) could not choose between type design and programming and decided to do both. His work includes randomfont Beowolf 1 (1990, MoMA collection 2011), typewriter Trixie (1991), banknote LTR Federal (1996, TDC 2002) and Eames Century Modern (2009, TDC, Letter.2, 2011).
For many years he has focused on the technical aspects of type design and developed, among other things, the acclaimed type interpolation tools Skateboard, MutatorMath and Superpolator. Erik co-authored the Unified Font Object (UFO) specification and the W3C Web Open Font Format standard 2. He is also co-organizer of the triannual Robothon Type & Technology conference 3.
Van Blokland is a 1989 graduate of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK). He is currently the head of the Type and Media master department. He invented the TypeCooker sketching tool which challenges students to meet ridiculous requirements.
Van Blokland consults on type design tools, logos, lettering and typefaces, with clients including HBO, The Government of The Netherlands, Adidas, and Adobe. He can talk endlessly about ancient digital font formats and currently dabbles in research projects on optics, digitisation, drawing and responsive type. More at LettError.com.
Take advantage of the early bird ticket now, join us on Saturday 30 May 2026! We’ll got an amazing lineup of speakers lined up for this year.
Now26 conference in Paris is a celebration of typography, featuring inspiring speakers from graphic design, web design, motion design, publishing, visual identity, communication, and type design.
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The 6-week type design programme that you’ve been waiting for starts on 2 June and ends 10 July 2026.
Open to all Our summer programme is in English and covers typeface design and calligraphy techniques, type history, and software practices. Whether you’re a design pro or just curious about type design, you can learn all about it in a relatively short amount of time.
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