Lucas de Groot (; born ), known professionally as Luc(as) de Groot, is a Dutch

type designer Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

. He is the head of the type foundry Fontfabrik, also trading as LucasFonts. De Groot is particularly known for the very large typeface family

Thesis A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...

font superfamily In typography, a font superfamily or typeface superfamily is a font family containing fonts that fall into multiple classifications. The norm in a superfamily is to start from an identical character shape; class-specific features such as seri ...

with

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

and

monospaced A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with Typeface#Proportion, variable-width fonts, where t ...

designs),

Calibri Calibri () is a digital sans-serif typeface family in the humanist or modern style. It was designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 2002–2004 and released to the general public in 2006, with Windows Vista. In Microsoft Office 2007, it replaced Time ...

, the longtime default font with

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

, and

Consolas Consolas is a monospaced typeface designed by Luc(as) de Groot. It is a part of the ClearType Font Collection, a suite of fonts that take advantage of Microsoft's ClearType font rendering technology. It has been included with Windows since Windo ...

.Garfield, Simon
''Just My Type: A book about fonts''
p. 329. Profile Books (UK), Gotham Books (US), 2010, pp.328-331. . De Groot is considered an expert on using interpolative font design and

stylistic alternates In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts "Roman" (or "regular ...

to develop large families with a wide range of features and languages supported.

Biography

De Groot was born in the Netherlands and studied at the

Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

. He adopted the name Luc(as) on his business card after graduating as a reference to people calling him by both "Luc" and "Lucas". After having worked for a few years at Amsterdam-based design agency BRS Premsela Vonk (since 2009 called Edenspiekermann), De Groot moved to Berlin to work at MetaDesign under Erik Spiekermann. Some of his early work included alternative versions of Frutiger, which much of his work is influenced by. While working at MetaDesign he began working on the Thesis family in his spare time, a project he described as being enabled by a lack of personal connections outside work. Thesis was initially published by Spiekermann's

FontShop FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces (fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital type foundries. The ''FontFont'' library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, among them renow ...

library before he established an independent company. De Groot's work includes commercially released fonts and also custom families for particular clients: Corpid (previously AgroSans) for the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture; SunSans for

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

; SpiegelSans and Taz for, respectively, the German magazines ''

Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' and '' die tageszeitung''; and FolhSerif for the Brazilian newspaper '' Folha''. Some of these such as Taz have since become publicly available. De Groot teaches at the Design Faculty of the Fachhochschule Potsdam or University of Applied Sciences in

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and largest city of the Germany, German States of Germany, state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the Havel, River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...

, outside Berlin.

Fonts

Major fonts by de Groot include: *

: contains the

TheSans, TheSans Mono and

designs TheMix and later TheAntiqua * Taz for the newspaper die Tageszeitung * FolhaSerif * SunSans, for

, for

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

(2004, released 2007), for Microsoft * Spiegel As an amusement, de Groot also developed a number of parodic, spiky or distorted reworkings of Thesis, including Nebulae and JesusLovesYouAll.

References

External links

*
LucasFonts
Lucas de Groot's design bureau.

Typo International lecture, 2018
{{DEFAULTSORT:Groot, Lucas de 1963 births Living people People from Noordwijkerhout Dutch typographers and type designers Dutch graphic designers Dutch emigrants to Germany Royal Academy of Art, The Hague alumni