That's the kind of graphic designer we really love at Prototypo: always playing with letters, from experimental shapes to vernacular alphabets!

Hi Jo, can you introduce yourself?
Hello, my name is Jo Klaps. I’m a freelance designer since 1988. Most of my work is about spatial design and graphic design. The name of my company is Studio Brussels Lof. I also teach Scenography at the University of Hasselt (UHasselt, Belgium)

You’re more a graphic designer than a typedesigner?
I’m mostly a graphic designer, but I love old fonts that I find on buildings, graves or monuments. I try to save them with my project Fontrescue. I take pictures of these fonts and I collect them in an online photobook. I also love to create fonts with original materials like ice, chocolate or plaster.

Have you allready drawn a font before using Prototypo? How did you do?
Yes I did. I used Illustrator and imported the design into a font editor.

I love to create fonts with original materials like ice, chocolate or plaster

For what purpose did you need your own font?
I created a font for a brochure called EXIT, a document about student projects.

Why didn’t you use an existing font for this project?
I wanted a personal font which didn’t look too obvious.

How many fonts did you create with Prototypo?
Untill now I’ve completed one font, but I’m still working on other projects.

Can you tell us what has been your creative process?
Well, I’ve adjusted the parameters in Prototypo untill I got something I liked. Then I just exported the font and used it. I didn’t need to refine the font in a typeface editor.

Prototypo is very easy to use and intuitive

Did you think about a final result before you started moving the parameters in Prototypo?
No I had no final result in mind. I just changed some parameters until I was satisfied.

How did Prototypo help you?
Prototypo is very easy to use and intuitive. The app simply allows creating most of the glyphs in the same style. I wish I had more fonts to start with, but I’ll surely keep using Prototypo for my futur font projects.

You told us that you’re also a teacher. Do you think Prototypo could be a good tool to learn the basics of typography?
I use it with my students. Prototypo makes them think about all the different parts of a font. You can compare a font with a piece of furniture. It consists of different parts that need each other to be really useful.

Thank you Jo!