Gerard Unger | |
---|---|
Born |
Arnhem |
22 January 1942
Nationality | Dutch |
Education | Gerrit Rietveld Academie |
Known for |
Typographer, Graphic designer |
Awards | H.N. Werkmanprijs 1984 Maurits Enschedé prize 1991 SOTA Typography Award 2009 Piet Zwart Lifetime Achievement Award 2012 |
Gerard Unger (born 22 January 1942, Arnhem) is a Dutch graphic and type designer. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam from 1963–67, and subsequently worked at Total Design, Prad and Joh. Enschedé. In 1975, he established himself as an independent developer. He lives and works in Bussum, Netherlands.
Unger has developed many typefaces over the years, of which several specially developed for newspapers (usually typefaces with a large x-height and large inner counters), such as Swift, Gulliver, Coranto and Vesta. He also develops designs for magazines, coins, books, logos and stamps.
A large number of Unger's typefaces are available from Linotype and the Dutch Type Library; his more recent faces are also available through the foundry Type Together. He has released new work on his own website since 1995. Unger has designed typefaces for the signage systems of both the Dutch highways (ANWB-fonts) and the Amsterdam metro. His newspaper face Gulliver (1993) is familiar to millions of readers, as it is the typeface used in both USA Today and several European newspapers, including the Stuttgarter Zeitung. His typeface Coranto is the typeface for The Scotsman and the Brazilian newspaper Valor.
In addition to his work in type design, he is active in the field of education. Unger has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie for over 30 years, and since 1994, he is a visiting professor at the University of Reading at the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication. From 2006 to 2012, he has been lecturer in typography at the Department of Fine Arts of the University of Leiden.