Gerard Unger overleden, de Volkskrant website

Some well-put words by journalist Bob Whitman on the De Volkskrant newspaper website, typeset in one of Unger’s designs.

Type designer Gerard Unger (Arnhem, 1942) may not be well-known to a large audience, but he is by far the best-read Dutchman ever. For example tomorrow’s de Volkskrant newspaper will contain hundreds of thousands of carefully designed gems from Unger, in the form of the letters of the Capitolium News font.

Capitolium, which De Volkskrant has been using since 2006, is one of many successful typefaces designed by Unger in his lifetime. Newspapers and magazines like Het Parool, Trouw, VPRO Gids, Vrij Nederland and USA Today work or have worked with fonts from Unger. His typeface designs can be found in the old PTT telephone books and in the Amsterdam metro stations. Unger designed a chocolate letter alphabet, but also the lettering of ANWB signs [Dutch highway signage]: “If I take a turn somewhere, I will always check whether the spacing on the signs is correct.”