The Artengar shows an short overview of Maarten Renckens' more experimental projects, worked on aside of his PhD about deaf and hearing impaired readers >. These projects often start from the love for letters. Each typeface has a story to tell, doing so by means of its shapes, a game of black and white. Because every letter can be seen as an artwork an sich, the projects often play with the borders between what letters can bear, sometimes going over it.

Vivace (2018?)

Vivace will be the output of Maarten's PhD about readers with hearing loss. It started as a design research into hiding the vertical stripe patterns within letter shapes, enhancing the reading comfort. It is also an expressive typeface: variations on the letter shapes support the expressive reading aloud (named visual prosody). Seven prosodic cues visually indicate all variations which the voice is able te make.

Forever Serious (2018)

The typeface Forever Serious makes the user aware of what is possible with digital type: it does not always show letters. By showing non-normal behavior, it confronts users with their habitual expectations about type. When typing, users expect a static appearance. But this typeface counters that expectation, rather enlarging the users’ consciousness about type & how they use type.

CC De Adelberg (Concept, 2018)

For the 25-year existence of the cultural center the Adelberg Lommel, they sent out an open call for a new housestyle. Out of 27 answers, we were selected along with three other teams to develop a concept. This was a conceptual collaboration with Studio Posen choosing for a clean but powerful image.

Schrijfmethode Bosch (2016)

The READSEARCH-team digitised the schrijfmethode Bosch. This special typeface from Noel Cuypers & Chris Bosch learns children how to write in a playful way. More info is available at Schrijftrein.com.

Writing Hands (2013)

"How to personalise digital communication more?" was the research question from Maarten's Master project. He tested personal communication, digital technologies and digital handwritings that are indistinctable from the original handwritings.

Courses (2013-now)

Maarten is also an active teacher. This website contains all his courses in one place >. And on Instagram, he collects examples of type containing errors with the tags #onceyouseeerrorsintype and #thenitfollowsyouforever to make people more conscious of fine typography/typefaces.



About the Artengar

The Artengar is the place where Maarten Renckens collects his experimental (typo)grafic designs and typefaces. For more information mail to contact@artengar.com


After finishing a Bachelor in Architecture (2011), Maarten started graphic design. The projects he started there, especially his studies about handwritings, developed his interest in type (2013). Next to graphic design, he also finished a specific teacher training in the arts (2014). At the same time he gave lessons at Vormingplus Limburg (2014-2015) and developed the courses of the Artengar. But typography remained a passion and his two internships with the award-winning typographic researcher Ann Bessemans (2014 & 2015) only developed more enthousiasm. The internship grew into an own PhD (2015-2019) at READSEARCH, a typographic research group of Hasselt University in collaboration with PXL University College where he also teaches till today.

With the Artengar, Maarten wants to develop his experimental, less commercial work. This page contains a couple of Maarten's works finished aside of his PhD. Information about his research can be found at READSEARCH.be. Information about Maarten can also be found at LinkedIn>, Academia.edu>, Researchgate>, Github> and via contact@artengar.com