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The Readable Type Designer

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dot-font: The Readable Type Designer
Thirty years of Gerard Unger's highly legible text and display typefaces can now be seen together on his new Web site.
Written by John D. Berry on February 9, 2003
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Categories: Fonts, Features
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Gerard Unger's typeface designs have added both style and legibility to any number of publications. Until now, however, his influence has been less obvious than it might be, becaus his work is scattered in so many places. The debut of his own Web site concentrates examples o all of his work in one place, making it easier to see both the forest and the trees. It's also a welldesigned site with a lot of useful information.

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Creative Essentials

Type for Everyday Use Unger's best-known typefaces are probably Swift (1985), Amerigo (1986), and Flora (1984). H newspaper face Gulliver (1993) is familiar to millions of readers, as it's the typeface used in bot "USA Today" and several European newspapers; but newspaper readers seldom know the nam of the typeface they're reading, and Gulliver is not generally available except to large publishin houses. If you live in the Netherlands, you probably see Unger's letters almost every day; he ha designed typefaces for the signage systems of both the Dutch highways and the Amsterdam metro.

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One of Unger's type designs is used on road signage in the Netherlands.

Most of Unger's type designs, however, are text faces, even if many of them will also work at display sizes. They tend to combine well with each other; he has designed sans serif type families that complement his serif families (Oranda with

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