Michael Harvey’s Dutch treat
He’s spent his life making letters one way or anothor, but Michael Harvey has had a varied career. He’s inscribed letters in stone, hand-lettered art for dozens of book covers — including two editions of James Joyce’s Ulysses — and created many display types, most of them based one way or another on his handlettering, and all of them named after jazz themes: Ellington, Strayhorn, Mezz, Conga Bravo.
Now he’s on to something different: an extended text family, Unicode compliant, called Unico. The design was inspired by the letter ‘v’ in a bookplate Harvey was designing for one David Bainton — the horizontal serifs seemed too static and horizontal, but giving them a gentle tilt fixed the design. Harvey developed his enhanced ‘v’ into a text family, which is to be released by the Dutch Type Library in January 2000.
Somewhat paradoxically, to make the face work well for text, Harvey’s tilted serifs had to go. DTL’s Frank Blokland, who is overseeing production of the huge character set, believes the face works not only for text but for display. But he understands Harvey’s distinct flair for display types, and DTL plans to produce a complementary display face later in 2000. This will retain the tilt-serifed ‘v’ that started it all, as well as other subtle Michael Harvey touches.
We’ve included a screen shot showing the Unico character set. For a more extensive view, visit the DTL Web site: www.dutchtypelibrary.nl and click on Unico.
— Kathleen Tinkel
