Gerrit noordzij biography of rory

“The internationally acclaimed typographer and type designer was known as someone who stepped outside the box.

The Burgundian bookproduction of the time owed much of its splendor to this elegant script. I imagine that Gerrit would have said this was a joke; but it also confirms my sense that the book is an exercise in self-congratulation. But this seems a sad state of affairs: a writer disconnected, and refusing to share in the common exchange of views and information.

In 2012, he wrote asking if I would be interested in publishing ‘a book on calligraphy, writing for its own sake, without caring for such conventions as legibility, but for the quality of shapes and patterns only’.

The Gerrit Noordzij Prize, a prize given to typographers and type designers for extraordinary contributions to the field, is named after him. A package that hasn't been opened for some time. Later he apologized for not being very communicative, though he didn’t try to make up for it. It stands out, isolated, and without visible connection to the rest of the publication.

And, incidentally it will demolish after-the-event historians who will generate endless historical or formal or historical-formal categories to describe letters. One memory of this conversation: to check something, Gerrit took down a copy of Hartley & Marks’s Letterletter from his shelves. This is Noordzij's acceptance speech when awarded the TDC Medal on October 10, 2013 via Typemedia:

“I thank the Type Directors Club for awarding me their prestigious medal.

Some day, I believed, I would become famous.

Students are great company. Such societies did perhaps still exist in the time of J.S. Bach, in which folk art could be continuous with the art of the church or the court. He whistled a tune and asked me if I knew what it was. Gerrit played almost no part in this process. He writes: From 000 to 100 the family is divided into 11 variants of increasing contrast.

In the article that he contributed to a special typography issue of De Gids, Gerrit was indulged by the editors: his piece ‘Het domein van de typograaf’ was set by the author in his own typeface. (On a visit to Reading, the journal’s editor, Merald Wrolstad, had given any student who wanted it a set of back numbers.) Setting out as a book review, the essay becomes an exposition of Gerrit’s theory of writing and of letters, and we are introduced to the first published version of his binary divisions: translation (writing with a broad-nibbed pen) / expansion (writing with a flexing nib), and cursive (the pen is not lifted from the writing surface; in his English-language expositions this was then changed to running, from the Dutch lopend) / interrupted (the pen is lifted).

“Letters always arise from the interaction between black and white, between the black of the ink and the white surrounding it. Video from 2014 by TYPO Berlin.

I had some exchanges with guiding figures, including Jost Hochuli and Nicolete Gray.