Luc Devroye is a computer scientist who was born in Belguim, studying at the University of Leuven. Leaving Belgium to avoid military service he moved to Japan to study in Osaka University and then to Texas University where he got a PhD. Since 1977 he has been a professors of computer science and maths at the McGill University in Montreal.

As previously studying quite a bit in the Computer Scientist field myself, I was shocked to find someone who had such a skills for typographic design. Luc creates a range of mathematical algorithms and software which generates different typefaces and fonts based on parameters such as the thickness or serifs. He has also worked on creating resources for type designers and overall helping speed up the process of creating different types.

As well as developing the software to create new fonts, he has also created tools which analyse existing typefaces and fonts and identifies the characteristics of its type anatomy. With this information, the typefaces can then be tweaked to help improve the typeface.

<aside> 💭 Reflection

I very much enjoyed reading up on Luc Devroye as I had never heard of him before I discovered his typographic work on Pinterest. I had never really thought about this side of typography before and it is really interesting to read about how he uses algorithms to development and improve typography. Luc’s research and software has made a massive impact on electronic type design and overall improved typography for the screen.

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