Gerard Unger – born 22. 1. 1942 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands – graphic designer, typographer, type designer, teacher.
1963–67: studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Then assistant to Wim Crouwel at Total Design. 1970: starts teaching at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. From 1975 onwards: freelance designer. 1981: does typography work for Dutch coins and postage stamps. Redesigns numerous magazines. 1984: designs special digits for the Dutch telephone directories. Digital typography consultant to Océ. Consultant to the BBC for the development of digital typefaces. Awarded the H. N. Werkman Prize in 1984. 1991: wins the Maurits Enschedé Prize. Has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, USA, (1979) and at Stanford University (1985).
In 2009, Linotype GmbH worked with Gerard Unger to refurbish his Swift 2.0 typeface family. The resulting Neue Swift is an updated version of his classic Swift design. Each of the 12 fonts in the family includes extensive language support, as well as OpenType features like small caps, oldstyle figures, and ligatures.
Fonts: Markeur (1972), M. O. L. (1975),
Demos® (1976),
Praxis® (1976),
Flora® (1980),
Hollander™ (1985), Oranda (1992), Amerigo (1987), Cyrano (1989),
Swift® (1989), Argo (1991), Decoder (1993), Gulliver (1993), Swift 2.0 (1995),
Neue Swift® (2009).
Click here to visit Gerard Unger’s website
* TYPOGRAPHY – An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History by Friedrich Friedl, Nicolaus Ott (Editor), Bernard Stein, published by Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH.
