21-05-2020
Graphic Design

Dutch Design Daily

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Janno Hahn www.jannohahn.nl

Lettering Houthaven Amsterdam

By 21-05-2020

Janno Hahn is a typographic designer who works from Amsterdam and has already left his unique letters in several places in the city with various public letterings that he has been commissioned to design by the Municipality of Amsterdam.

For example, he designed a large lettering for the Spaarndammer neighborhood on a railway bridge that thus becomes the entrance to the neighborhood. Those letters refer to the Amsterdam School style which is quite recognizable in the architecture in this neighborhood, but at the same time they are also more contemporary.

When the Municipality of Amsterdam commissioned architect Thijs Verburg (photo 8) to design 14 bridges for the new residential area the Houthaven, he therefore knew immediately that he had to ask Janno to design the lettering.

The Houthaven is a new district adjacent to the old district called the Spaarndammerbuurt, and in this new district all the various responsible architects have in their architecture incorporated more or less contemporary references to the Amsterdam School style.

Janno used his Spaarndammerbuurt letters as a starting point because they already expressed a good mix of past and present. Eventually, he made a slimmer version of the letters, changed some characters and made a complete set of letters and numbers of them at places where it had not been necessary before. Due to the lack of round shapes in the letters, they fit in well with the faceted pillars of the bridges.

The 14 bridges have been named after cities with which Amsterdam has over the centuries traded a lot and from which the wood was literally shipped to the city for the construction of the city. For example, you will find the Kronstadt Bridge, the Rostock Bridge and the Helsingfors bridge.

Also, all bridges have their own number with which the city keeps track of how many bridges there are. With all the locks, culverts, viaducts and unnumbered bridges, there are now about 6.222. This makes Amsterdam the city with by far the most bridges in the world.

More Janno Hahn > 05.07.2016 / 08.05.2020