Teylers Museum in Haarlem is the oldest museum in the Netherlands, founded in 1784 based on the legacy of Pieter Teyler van der Hulst, a banker and philanthropist with Enlightenment ideals. In his will, Teyler left provisions for the establishment of an institution to house scientific instruments, natural history collections, and art, with the goal of promoting knowledge and learning for the public good.

The museum's Oval Room, originally the primary exhibition space, was designed to reflect the intellectual values of the time. With its elliptical shape and high dome, it provided a setting for the display of objects and scholarly study. Today, it continues to house scientific instruments and geological specimens. As the museum expanded, additional galleries were built to accommodate its growing collection, but the Oval Room remains a central and historically significant feature.

For several decades, Teylers Museum has used DTL Documenta and DTL Haarlemmer for its signage and publications, including captions in the glass cases and information typeset on the walls during exhibitions. However, it is unfortunately unclear who first introduced these typefaces or how their use at the museum began.

Over the years, several studios including Bregt Balk, Gracia Lebbink and Studio Wesseling have worked on (parts of) the museum’s identity. It’s not clear which of the shown items was created by whom, except the image showing the ‘chiseled’ T, which is part of Studio Wesseling’s previous visual identity for the museum (they are also responsible for the current branding).

Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp has been using DTL VandenKeere for approximately 25 years in its exterior and interior signage, as well as in its publications. This typeface is prominently featured throughout the museum. Its return to the museum was significant, as Hendrik van den Keere (ca. 1540–1580) originally cut the Parangonne Romaine (known as Reale Romaine by Christophe Plantin), which served as the model for the digital variant, in 1575. Plantin first employed this type in 1576. The italic of DTL VandenKeere, on the other hand, is based on a model by the French punchcutter François Guyot (ca. 1505–1570).

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On the 10th of October 2015 the ArchipelpoëZie foundation celebrated its tenth ‘poetry wall’ by revealing a poem from the Belgian poet and diary writer Leonard Nolens, typeset in DTL Documenta on the wall of a historic building located in between the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) and Museum Meermanno in The Hague.

The foundation has as goal to embellish blank walls with poems typeset in typefaces designed by laureates from the KABK. The lettering is applied via laser-cut sheets and airbrush.

Leonard Nolens

In 2007 the St. Peter and Paul Church in the Dutch city of Maassluis was put into service. The futuristic building is designed by the architects Mari Baauw and René Olivier. The church is constructed out of steel, which is covered with a double layer of canvas. The glass artist Stef Hagemeier was commissioned to design the window of the apse. Fascinated by the prologue of the Gospel of John, he decided to put this text into the window.

Hagemeier is a former student of the famous Dutch type designer and calligrapher Chris Brand, and he selected DTL Albertina for the lettering. At that time he was working together with Frank E. Blokland on the lettering of the stained-glass windows of the St. Peter Church in the city of Leyden (see also this video). Blokland designed a special version of DTL Albertina with shorter ascenders and descenders, and smaller capitals for the window of the St. Peter and Paul Church.

Its production took almost ten years, more than hundred people worked on the concept and realization, besides the people at the printing office. The publication has to last for at least forty years. Eight tons of red ink and roughly 3,000 tons of light-weight paper (40 grams) were needed to produce the 3.6 million copies (1,300 pages each) of Gotteslob, the new prayer and song book of the Catholic church in Germany and Austria.

Responsible for the design of Gotteslob was Matthias Bumiller from the design agency Finken & Bumiller in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2006 he started with the design of this magnum opus, which resulted in a positively received test version in the next year. Legibility had the highest priority and factors like low light in churches in combination with the inevitable relatively small point sizes were taken into account. After testing several typefaces, Frank E. Blokland’s DTL Documenta was selected.

In autumn 2013 the Lost Art Press published a deluxe edition of André-Jacob Roubo’s L’art du menuisier in an English translation under the title To Make as Perfectly as Possible. This beautiful and costly book was designed by Wesley B. Tanner.

On the Lost Art Press Blog, Tanner elaborates on the design of the book:

[…] The design of the deluxe edition takes the ambiance of the 18th-century book for its design cues; early 20th-century book designers, most notably Bruce Rogers, termed this “allusive typography.” Hallmarks of the Rococo book include the substitution of type ornament for woodcuts, a rationalized system of titling (breaking the chapters into discrete parts, and giving them subheadings), and the use of Baroque typefaces. Each of these changes marks the progress toward the industrialized production techniques of the 19th-century: the change from hand-press platen to the cylinder press; rationalization of scientific inquiry; a narrowing of the letterforms, together with shorter descenders and a tendency towards a more brilliant style of cutting. […]’, and on the selection of the applied typefaces: ‘Fleischmann types, finding themselves eclipsed by the modern styles, fell out of fashion and disappeared from use; but for an edition like “[…] Types created during the 400 years of printing were entirely cut by hand, letter by letter, and each size was adjusted for its optical size. After the invention of the pantograph, most types were created using only one master set of drawings. This has continued to be largely the case with the current group of digital fonts. A few fonts have been designed with optical scaling in mind: a set of drawings for sizes 12 point and below, known as Text; a Display set for 14 point and above. DTL Fleischmann is one of these. In the deluxe edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible,” the footnotes, sidenotes and the editor’s comments on process have were set in the Text version; Roubo’s text and most of the headings were set using the Display set.

Besides DTL Fleischmann ad-hoc display fonts and ornaments bases on work by Jacques-François and Matthias Rosart digitized by the book’s designer were applied.

Q-marq is a Dutch branding agency that uses DTL Prokyon as corporate identity typeface since 2012.

Around 1995 the Dutch Type Library adapted and digitized the Pennenstreken (‘Pen-strokes’) fonts for a writing method for primary schools from the Dutch publisher Zwijsen. Until that moment the examples in the exercise books were written by hand and inconsistencies in the writing method were relatively easy circumvented by the calligraphers. In the digital versions these inconsistencies had to corrected as much as possible, this way reducing the amount of ad hoc variants.

The artwork was basically formed by scans from earlier handwritten editions of the method. These were enlarged, if necessary corrected with ink and white paint, and manually digitized in the IKARUS format. The method was complex with initial, medial and final variants of the letters. This was in the pre-OpenType era, and PostScript Type1 nor TrueType made use of OpenType Layout features, of course. And there were different versions for text and display. So, the resulting number of fonts was impressive, the accompanying manual proportionally complex.

Only occasionally the Dutch Type Library works for third parties. Basically this is only done when the offered work is considered interesting and challenging. This project was both.

Living Proof Brand Identity

Longwood Gardens uses Gerard Unger's DTL Paradox as corporate identity typeface since 2011. For the website @font-face packages are in use. Here and there (inevitably?) Arial and Times show up on the website still.

The Teylers Museum in Haarlem is first and oldest museum in the Netherlands. Teylers was founded in the eighteenth century. Since a couple of years DTL Haarlemmer is the corporate identity typeface of the museum.

For roughly a decade the seriffed and sans versions of DTL Documenta are the corporate identity typefaces of the famous Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The typeface is used for the signage in the museum, publications, annual reports, et cetera. The usage of DTL Documenta on the Rijksmuseum’s website is not always consistent though, but ah… such is life.

Paul Janssen et al., de Gouden Delta der Lage Landen, Twintig eeuwen beschaving tussen Seine en Rijn (Antwerpen, 1996). 403 pp, linen binding with slipcase, 29×24 cm.

This was one of the first major books typeset in the display and text versions of DTL Fleischmann, which were both released in 1994. The design is by the Belgium book designer Antoon De Vylder, who made an extensive range of books for the Mercatorfonds Paribas using DTL typefaces (in many cases just after their release). Antoon De Vylder is also lecturer at the Plantin Society in Antwerp since the 1990s.

An awarded beautiful series of booklets accompanying CDs, on which classical music is combined with storytelling, published by Gottmer Uitgevers Groep, the Netherlands. The design is by the Amsterdam-based studio bockting ontwerpers and different illustrators and authors worked on the (still ongoing) project.

The signage at Keflavík International Airport is typeset in DTL Argo. Gerard Unger’s wonderful sans serif is in use at the Icelandic airport for roughly a decade now.

Since 2010 new street signs are placed in the city of Haarlem for which DTL Haarlemmer is used. The design agency Bureau Arjan Karssen selected the seriffed version for the street signs in the historic city centre, and the accompanying sans serif is used on two different signs for the pre- and post World War ii parts of the city.

The new designs are an attempt to halt the proliferation of street sign variants in Haarlem.