He has designed a diverse collection of typefaces including Flex, Feisar, ChaletComprimé and many custom fonts for worldwide clients such as Audi, Autodesk, NBCUniversal, WDR and VPRO. At TYPO Berlin 2013, Typecooks Van Blokland and Van der Laan will quickly blanche, filet and slice the recipes sketched by TYPO guests at the conference. Hand in your drawings before the talk, which will take place on 18 May 2013 at 2 pm on the TYPO Stage.

1. Which work are you particularly proud of? Which work best represents your style or approach?

The new corporate typeface of Audi was exclusively designed by Paul van der Laan and Pieter van Rosmalen.

Of course the typefaces we designed for high-profile clients such as Audi, USA Today or Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, always give a very special feeling when you see them out there in the wild. But in the end, the works where you go to extreme lengths just to explore a stupid idea that you have in your mind, are the most satisfactory when finished. Feisar Express is a good example of that.

 Bold Monday designed a custom typeface family for the the Rijksmuseum in AmsterdamFeisar Express

2. We chose “Touch” as the theme for this year’s TYPO Berlin. In your opinion, what qualities does design need to have to touch people’s lives? Can you name an example for for design work that had this effect on you?  

Humanity. The surprise when you discover that a design has certain human qualities applied in an intelligent way. That makes the difference to me between good design, and brilliant design. A very good example is the sleep indicator light in Apple MacBooks.

3. Is there someone you always have wanted to get in touch with, but so far haven’t? Who do you especially look forward to getting in touch with at TYPO Berlin?

I would love to spend an evening drinking beer with Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider from Kraftwerk. But that chance is pretty slim, I suppose! For TYPO Berlin I am particularly looking forward to get in touch with people I haven’t met before, and who will be great to stay in touch with afterwards.

Paul van der Laan

Type Designer, Typographer (The Hague)

Paul van der Laan lives and works in The Hague and is founding partner of Bold Monday typefoundry. He is also staff member of the KABK Type & Media masters course in type design. He has designed a diverse collection of typefaces including Oskar, Flex, Feisar, and a variety of custom fonts for worldwide clients such as Audi, USA Today, General Electric, NBCUniversal and Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Speaker page

4. Required reading/watching: What are currently your favorite interesting/beautiful publications, exhibitions, books, TV-shows, movies, apps and/or websites?

Exhibitions: David Hockney – A Bigger Picture, which I saw in the Guggenheim in Bilbao.  And in December I was fortunate to visit Inhotim  in Brazil, which is a beautiful combination of a contemporary art museum and a botanical garden.
Movies: Drive, Moonrise Kingdom, True Grit, Django Unchained
TV-shows: The Daily Show with John Stewart
Apps: Evernote, iA Writer