Quick Facts
Biography
Albert-Jan Pool (born 1960 in Amsterdam, Netherlands) is a Dutch professional type designer. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague.
After his study he left for Germany. From 1987 to 1991 he was Type Director at Scangraphic in Wedel, near Hamburg. From 1991 to 1994 he was Manager of Type Design and Production at URW. During this time he completed his type families URW Imperial, URW Linear and URW Mauritius.
By January 1995 he started his own studio Dutch Design. Together with type-consultant Stefan Rögener and copywriter Ursula Packhäuser he wrote and designed a book on the effects of typefaces on brand image entitled ‘Branding with Type’, which has been published by Adobe Press in 1995. FF DIN and FF OCR-F were among his first typeface design projects. He also created the Jet Set Sans, C&A InfoType, DTL HEIN GAS and HEM Headline corporate typefaces. In 2010 he extended his typeface family FF DIN with FF DIN Round and wrote ‘Digital Block Letters’ a small brochure on the history of round sans serif typefaces and the development of FF DIN Round, which was published by FontShop International in 2010.
In 1999 Albert-Jan Pool co-founded the design agency FarbTon Konzept + Design. During his time with FarbTon he created the Regenbogen Bold typeface as well as DTL HeinGas Headline. He left FarbTon at the end of 2005.
By January 2006 he started publishing his findings on the history of the German standard typefaces as defined in DIN 1451. Since 2007 he is working on his doctoral thesis on the history of constructed sans serif typefaces in Germany, which is tutorized by prof. Gerard Unger of Leiden University.
He has been teaching type design at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule as well as typography at the HAMM Hanseatische Akademie für Marketing und Medien (Hanseatic Academy for Marketing and Media) from 1996 to 1999. In 2006 he also took up these jobs again.
In 2011 the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) decided to extend its collection of applied arts by digital typefaces. FF DIN was amongst the first set of 23 typefaces which were collected by MoMa.
The history of the design of a contemporary typeface
He has written a series of articles about the origins of the DIN typeface, published in the e-magazine 'Encore', issues 13-15, 17-18.
- Industrial Archeology – DIN, the first German Corporate Typeface?
- The Constructivist Connection – DIN, Bauhaus and the New Typography
- Siemens sets a Standard – DIN 1451 on its way up
- DIN for All: From the Economic Miracle to Art and Vernacular Typography – FF DIN: New at the Start
- How German is the DIN typeface? – Fahren, fahren, fahren at the Autobahn