SYSTEMATICALLY SLOPPY: BRAM DE DOES, TYPE DESIGNER AND TYPOGRAPHER
(SYSTEMATISCH SLORDIG: BRAM DE DOES, LETTERONTWERPER EN TYPOGRAAF)
Dir. Coraline Korevaar, 2003
Netherlands. 53 min
In Dutch with English subtitles

Amongst type designers, at least according to the writer, Bram de Does is legendary. A perfectionist obsessed with precision, his legacy and influence far outpace his production—creating only two typefaces in his lifetime. The quality of his types are so highly regarded that he is considered one of the greatest to ever do it. S-tier. SYSTEMATICALLY SLOPPY stars a large cast of Bram’s colleagues and contemporaries, as well as the man himself, in a discussion of his career, his work, his nature, and the nature of work itself. The film features interviews with prominent members of the Dutch type design community, like the late Gerard Unger, both Gerrit and Peter Matthias Noordzij, Mathieu Lommen, a few Enschedés, Jost Hochuli, and more.

The documentary, like Bram, is direct and workmanlike, and features a soundtrack of Bram’s own violin playing. It details Brams early life and career before type design: as an aspiring musician, and a graphic & a book designer for the Joh. Enschedé printing and foundry operation, where he grew to detest life in middle management. The second act of the film tells the origins of Bram’s two masterful typeface designs, Trinité and Lexicon. For a man so good at something, between both book design and type design, it’s wonderfully comforting to listen to him describe how much he loathed it. How much he would rather enjoy life, play music, and farm the land, than have to deal with bosses and Work with a capital W. Bram is mindnumblingly and unfuckwithably talented, but still feels tied to the job, because of a need for income, and is just as alienated as the rest of us.

Spectacle will be joined virtually by Mathieu Lommen and Erik van Blokland for a discussion with Hannes Famira following the film on Sunday June 18th. Lommen is a design historian and a curator of Graphic Design at the Allard Pierson museum of the University of Amsterdam. In addition to appearing on screen in the film, he initiated and edited “Bram de Does: typographer & type designer” in 2003, the first substantial publication devoted to De Does’s life and work. Erik van Blokland is a Dutch type designer, tool developer, and educator. He is the head of the TypeMedia masters program at the Royal Academy of Art, in The Hague, and sells original typefaces through his own LettError studio as well as through foundries like House Industries and Commercial Type. Hannes Famira is a type designer and filmmaker. He is the lead instructor at the Type@Cooper program at Cooper Union, and releases typefaces under his own name through Type Network.

Screening with:
THE MAKING OF A RENAISSANCE BOOK
Pr. Dana Atchley, 1969
Belgium, United States. 21 min
In English

Shot entirely on location at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, this short film details the complete process of carving punches, striking and justifying matrices, casting type, and printing text, all of which is based on the writings of Christophe Plantin himself. Special thanks to Book Arts Press and the Rare Book School.