Cinq Ans #1: How it all started

TilburgsAns, the typeface with icons, based on the character of the city of Tilburg, is a project that started as an experiment. Type deisgner Sander Neijnens was looking for a simple way to incorporate three illustrations of specific Tilburg items – the jar pisser, king Willem II and the artwork Rotating House – in a font. By doing so he wanted to connect the design to the place where it was made.
He succeeded to connect the icons to the words they represent in such a way that the illustration pops up after typing the last letter of the word. It was not only a practical way to maken icons available in a font, but it also bridged the gap between words and images 

It lasted more than a year before the idea was born to make a Tilburg typeface with fifty icons, based on this technique. In september 2014 Sander asked illustrator Ivo van Leeuwen to draw the icons of specific locations, stories, events and dialect words and to discuss together how the typeface could become a part of the social and cultural life in the city. Ivo agreed but had one condition: the typeface Sander used for his experiment was too beautiful for Tilburg, so a new font had to be designed to represent the raw character of the city. There he had a point so they started from scratch. A year and a half later the typeface was ready.

On April 10, 2016 TilburgsAns was launched.