Hannes’ understanding of type comes mostly out of his Dutch design education at the Royal Academy in The Hague (KABK). With a painter for a mother and neo-modernist architect for a father his earliest influences are based in a love for Scandinavian and traditional Japanese design. Combining the freedom of painting with the structured thinking of architecture seems to have quite naturally led him to type design at the center of his creative work.

After having worked at Meta Design, at the Buro Petr van Blokland and at House Industries Hannes started his own design studio Das Kombinat in 1999. He added Kombinat-Typefounders in 2001 and renamed it FamiraFonts in 2016.

An ongoing practice of teaching type is the most formative influence on Hannes’ thinking since his years as a student at KABK. He has been teaching in the Type@Cooper Extended and Condensed programs at the The Cooper Union since January 2011. Hannes also taught various typography and type design classes at the Basel School for Design in Switzerland, at The Cooper Union New York City, SVA the School of Visual Arts, the UArts in Philadelphia, the New Jersey City University, the Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaft und Kunst Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen, the Kunsthochschule Kassel Rutgers University and the City University of New York.