Typographic City-Marketing

Dutch typographer Sander Neijnens and illustrator Ivo van Leeuwen have created a font for their hometown Tilburg.

If you think city-marketing is still about lousy slogans, think again. City-marketing is democratizing, just like urban design. It emerges in new forms and shapes, and citizens are increasingly engaged in building and communicating the identity of their city. Designers Sander Neijnens and Ivo van Leeuwen have discovered typography as a new instrument to market their hometown Tilburg.

TilburgsAns

Last Monday the designers launched TilburgsAns, a sans serif font entirely dedicated to city of Tilburg. Neijnens created the font’s letters, while Van Leeuwen added a set of icons inspired by typical Tilburg buildings and landmarks, events, people, and terms. In order to fund the making of TilburgsAns, citizens and organizations in Tilburg were able to adopt one of the letters or icons — which resulted in a font that’s free to download and to use for citizens of Tilburg and everyone else who wants to pay a tribute to the city.

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