Lettering design for the Keizersgrachtkerk in Amsterdam completed in September 2024 and adjusted in December 2024.
Background
The Keizersgrachtkerk (Emperor's Canal Church) is a church building in an eclectic style from 1888. The building has decorations with geometrical shapes and stylized leaves. Above the entrance is a meters-wide frame that looks like it was made for a name sign, but that has always remained empty until now.
The church community wanted to have the name 'Keizersgrachtkerk' in the frame and approached me for some contemporary examples of typography. I showed them some late-19th-century signs, but I also suggested to base the name sign on lettering by the architects that I found in the image database of the Stadsarchief (City Archive).
On a 1887 drawing of the church façade, the architects Gerlof Bartholomeus Salm (1831-1897) and Abraham G. Bzn. Salm (1857-1915) had used hand-lettering in a decorative border. Not only do these letters have a historical link with the building, I also thought that the style could work with the other elements of the façade.
Sketch
The copyright of the original lettering has expired and the archive offered a copyright-free scan on their website, so I was able to use that scan directly for my first sketch. Not all letters of 'Keizersgrachtkerk' were used in the original, so I had to make up some letters based on the letters that were present.
With this sketch, I made a mockup of what it would look like on the façade, and we agreed I would create a vectorized version of the text for the sign, so it could be easily scaled to make the eventual physical sign.
Design process
First, I selected the nicest versions of each letterform and followed the outlines, where I tried to compensate for optical effects and scanning artefacts. Then, I created the missing letters using elements of the existing ones and I combined all letters to make a preliminary lettering design. On this, I received feedback from the church community and from experienced type designer David Jonathan Ross.
For the final lettering design, I changed some of the curves for aesthetic reasons, reduced the contrast between thicker and thiner lines for better legibility at a distance, made the serifs thicker for a more solid look, and balanced the line weights to make them more even overall. This resulted in quirky letters that are new but inspired by historical lettering linked to the building, completed in September 2024.
Adjusted design
After the design was completed, the church asked for some adjustments which lead me to make the letters more regular and their features more aligned. This resulted in an adjusted design in December 2024.
