| Published in 1998, Sunbowl or Symbol by Loek Schönbeck (1949), an Amsterdam historian of ancient philosophy, is a 500–page book about Heraclitus's conception of the sun. Wanting to make sure that the complex book would be in every respect as magnificently produced as he envisaged it, Schönbeck decided to personally design and publish it; as he found no typeface which had perfectly balanced Greek and Latin alphabets, he decided to draw and digitize a complete font family himself. | The typeface Elyade, designed between 1990 and 1998 for Sunbowl or Symbol, is the work of a uncompromising perfectionist and individualist. Schönbeck set out to single-handedly revolutionize the typography of highly complex philosophical/philological texts. Besides his ambition to create optimum compatibility between Greek and Latin alphabets, he also wanted letterforms as interesting and lively as the types used in the books printed by Aldus Manutius in fifteenth–century Venice – strongly believing that in that respect he could outdo most contemporary Aldus and Garamond revivals. |
| Schönbeck's unique do-it-yourself approach won him one of 1998's Best Dutch Book Awards.16 Schönbeck has written extensively about his motives and method in designing Elyade, partly in reaction to two short, scathing reviews by Frank E. Blokland in the trade press. Schönbeck related that both his original drawings and his corrections to early proof settings were made in Venice, bent over the original Aldine pages. | He argued that in order to fully appreciate the way Elyade's Latin alphabet was adapted to harmonize with the Greek, one has to 'undogmatize the laws of form' – meaning, apparently, to set aside the rule that characters have to relate to each other in a regular, predictable way, which Schönbeck assumes underlies all of today's historically inspired type design. |
| The ultimate test of any typeface is in the eye of the reader. And to this reader's eye, Schönbeck's effort is not without merit, but immature. The brilliant idiosyncracies of the original Aldine forms have been translated into undulating details which do indeed make the romans blend in nicely with the Greek script; but the overall colour in text sizes is rather weak, and some of the type's frills attract too much attention. | There are recent examples of how undogmatic thinking about form can lead to fascinating typefaces that possess the historically inspired irregularity Schönbeck has striven for, yet make for pleasant reading – from Fred Smeijers's Renard to the complete works of Prague type designer Frantisek Storm. Yet it is those designers' talent and expertise that has turned interesting ideas into great type. In the case of Elyade, the result is too self-conscious and, literally, too meagre to be in that league. |