richard niessen

after a bit of confusion in finding our way to the "amsterdamse bos"-camping place, we start our journey to amsterdam ... about an unexspected long hour of bus-travelling. finally we suprisingly get to richard niessen's buero at time. after a warm welcome we start to talk to richard about his works. again another approach to typedesign. maybe you could say a more graphical or even artistic way of designing types. he shows us the sketches to his first font "tartan" built for a book about interior design. his fonts are created to support his graphical intensions and ideas. that's the purpose. it's not all about readability or the perfect letter - instead richard designs the font regarding the concept of a graphical product. being a self thaught font-designer his fonts are finished in a way that he could use it for his graphics. so a distribution was never his intension. because of his preference to ornamental structures and designs his fonts often were built out of a certain grid giving the chance to be combined making ornamental and spreading designs. his fonts are often a main part in his designs and work with the other material like pictures, artwork etc. hand in hand. at the moment he and some friends work on a big project creating some kind of a wallpaper consisting of a "secret" font out of architectural fragments and pieces. while we talk to richard dozens of stencils are cut nearby. at the end richard thanks us for keeping him away from cutting stencils. for us it was a pleasure…