Petr van Blokland (1956) is the owner, together with Claudia Mens, of Buro Petr van Blokland + Claudia Mens, a design studio founded in 1980 that works in cooperation with a network of participants per project. He studied cum laude at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague (KABK), and also Industrial Design at Delft Technical University, and has lectured extensively throughout his career: In the departments of Graphic Design at both the Academy of Arts in Arnhem (1984–1989), the KABK (1988-2011), AKV St. Joost in Breda (2010 - 2020), and Cooper Union in New York City (2020–present). He has also taught in Masters programmes at AKV St. Joost and in the KABK Type & Media course (1998–present).

Petr received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique International (ATypI) in 1988, an award granted to type designers under the age of 35 who make outstanding contributions to type design, and served on the ATypI Board from 1996 to 2003. In 1988 he also began running novel design games at various design schools and conferences like TypoBerlin, as well as within various corporations, and continues to offer them for select clients. His writing on design is published in the Dutch design magazines Items and BNO Vormberichten on a regular basis.

He co-founded webtype.com in 2010, and typenetwork.com in 2016, for which he has developed many type design tools. Currently his focus is with his type foundry TYPETR where he publishes new type alongside best-sellers including Proforma, Productus, Presti, Upgrade, Responder, Powerlift and Bitcount.