News

Participating designers / design studios

- 75B
- Aap-ontwerpers
- Henrik Barends
- Boy Bastiaens /  Stormhand,
- Studio Anthon Beeke
- Frank Beekers
- Jop van Bennekom
- Beukers/Scholma
- Ingeborg Bloem
- Wigger Bierma
- Evert Bloemsma
- Jan Bons
- Irma Boom
- Studio Boot
- Peter Te Bos
- Thomas Buxó
- Wim Crouwel
- De Designpolitie
- Bob van Dijk
- Dorp & Dal/ Jan Middendorp
- Jaap Drupsteen
- Studio Dumbar
- Daphne Duyvelshoff van Peski
- Eden
- Marianne Elbers
- Faydherbe/De Vringer
- Bureau Piet Gerards
- Mieke Gerritzen / NL-Design
- Gerard Hadders / Bureau Langehaven
- Melle Hammer
- Frits van Hartingsveldt
- Marten Jongema
- Kesselskramer
- René Knip
- Koeweiden Postma
- Laboratorivm
- Frank Langedijk
- Lava Graphic Design
- Victor Levie
- LUST
- Martin Majoor
- Karel Martens
- Mediamatic
- Erik Mels
- Mevis en Van Deursen
- Walter Nikkels
- Gerrit Noordzij
- Bart Oppenheimer
- Opera
- Studio Joseph Plateau
- Lex Reitsma
- Ron van Roon
- Gebroeders Silvestri
- Ko Sliggers
- Fred Smeijers
- Joost Swarte
- Thonik
- Ronald Timmermans
- André Toet / Samenwerkende Ontwerpers
- Ewoud Traast
- Jaap van Triest
- Gerard Unger
- Vandejong
- Peter Verheul
- Rick Vermeulen
- Visser Bay Anders Toscani
- Tessa van der Waals
- Mart. Warmerdam
- Alex van Warmerdam
- Roger Willems
- ZEE, Rotterdam

  
©1998 HazahaH, corporate identity, Koeweiden Postma Amsterdam (since 1987), client: HazahaH, Amsterdam

©1999 Cover catalogue 'Condition Humaines, Portraits Intimes,' design: Jan van Mechelen (ZEE - grafisch en architectonisch ontwerpen, Rotterdam), photo: Rineke Dijkstra (Tia, Amsterdam, June 23, 1994)

©1998 Nike Bombardez, poster: Studio Boot, Edwin Vollebergh (The Netherlands, Den Bosch 1962), client: Wieden Kennedy Europe, Amsterdam

©1996 OASE 29, magazine for architecture, design: Karel Martens (1939) Arnhem, client: Stichting Oase, Nijmegen

|©1994 Tien van tachtig, stamps: Karel Martens (1939) Arnhem, client: KPN / Royal Netherlands telecom, Art & Design Department, The Hague

©1996 1, 5, 10, 25, 50 guilders, telephonecards: Karel Martens (1939), Arnhem, client: PTT Telecom, The hague

©1999 Netherlands Photo Institute, poster Theatre of manners, design: Jan van Mechelen (ZEE - grafisch en architectonisch ontwerpen, Rotterdam), photo: Tina Barney

©1997 Wim Crouwel - Mode en Module, monography cover & book design: Karel Martens (1939) Arnhem & Jaap van Triest (1957) Amsterdam, client: Uitgeverij 010 Publishers, Rotterdam

©1993 Police (Porsche), corporate identity striping and logo: Studio Dumbar (since 1978) The Hague / Joost Roozekrans, client: Ministry of Internal Affairs, The Hague

A Cultural Voice:
Contemporary
Dutch Design

Presented by AIGA Detroit and the
College for Creative Studies (CCS)

January 12-30, 2004

This exhibition presents a selection of the diversity of work produced by Dutch designers and design studios over the last decade. From these posters, books, catalogues, brochures, house styles, annual reports, letter fonts, magazines and a few websites, it is evident that graphic design is well integrated in all forms of expression in Dutch companies, cultural institutions and government agencies. This multiform stream of communication is the result of good design schools and professional possibilities for designers. At the same time, the collected work bears witness to the energy, the daring and the entrepreneurial spirit of their clients. This collection characterises our culture, one that offers ample space for individuality, tolerance and progressive opinions.

Graphic design is, traditionally, a discipline open to developments in the fine arts, architecture and photography. Dutch professionals have always had an affinity with the French pictorial poster, but they have equally responded to the influences of the Swiss School and New Realism typography. At the moment, their influences are far more difficult to pinpoint. Since the late 1980s or early 1990s, the graphic designer (like everyone else) has been continuously inundated with an excessive new visual culture, based on advertising, television and new media, the internet and other computer-generated images. Today, the graphic designer in the Netherlands yet again seems to prefer to react to this abundance with accustomed sobriety, and shows tremendous interest in the potentials of typography and clear, decisive photography.

This exhibition was previously shown in:
- Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Institut Neerlandais in Paris, France
- Musee des Beaux ArtsNilla Steinbeck in Mulhouse, France
- Musee des Beaux Arts in Valence, France
- Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, USA
- ADGFAD, Premios Laus, Barcelona, Spain
- Erasmus House, Netherlands Embassy, Jakarta, Indonesia
- American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), New York

"Roadshow Dutch Graphic Design 1990-2001" is curated by Toon Lauwen and packaged by Lauwen Projects Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

New fonts
The availability of new fonts, or electronically generated letter types, has increased dramatically in the last ten years, and takes on a wide variety of forms, from conceptual to more traditional letter styles. The introduction of the Apple computer and its lay-out software made it easy to manage new font production and technical realisation. Although the design of a new family of letters can still be very time-consuming, the process is accessible to a greater number of designers and is more flexible. Since then, we in the Netherlands now boast an internationally leading group of young letter designers whose new fonts are being successfully distributed through such independent publishing houses as Fontshop, founded by Erik Spiekermann and Nevil Brody, Rudy Vanderlans" Emigre Fonts and The Enschede Letter Foundry, headed by Mathias
Noordzij.

Books
In the growing market for books, an increasing number of publications are intended not to convey information, but to more generally communicate. In the Netherlands, there are still designers who consider books as principally for reading. For them. books must be clear in both legibility and information. There are also designers who intentionally break with the book's traditional service role. Certainly, when it has less informational content, the book's form takes on the major role, and designers opt for stylistic means that are "strange" or "different", freely borrowing from magazines, websites or advertising. This need not per se fall short: publications with slightly less stringent cohesion requirements, such as catalogues, are frequently interesting visual experiences because a designer has assumed the role of director or art director.

Posters
Borders that used to be so clearly defined, such as those separating graphic design and the fine arts, or graphic design and advertising, are slowly vanishing. Flexibility is the norm for a large portion of graphic design, which is geared to change. In posters and magazines, the visual languages of photography, typography and the fine arts are easily mixed together. This is not so strange, for designers are using the same computers and software as the fine artists, the photographers and the advertising studios. We (like the French) find our strongest visual culture in announcements for cultural events, such as theatre performances, festivals or exhibitions. Thanks to the great creative freedom that cultural institutions extend their designers, posters also reflect changing mores: sexual openness. pluriform ethnic culture and sometimes even an almost alienating compulsion for innovation.

Corporate styles
Corporate identity, whose classic criteria drifted in from America and England in the 1960s, is also moving with the times, and is becoming more open in vision and form. "Lifestyles", "trends" and "mood boards" have worked their way into the jargon and thinking of design studios and young designers busy creating house styles for companies, institutions and large or small government departments. For large concerns, such as KPN Telecom, the PTT postal service and Rabobank, the approach of a cohesive whole of house styles, logos, lettering on buildings and vehicles and soon, is a comprehensive, complex and expensive process. Corporate identity includes the various printed materials, the stationery, company forms, annual reports, etc., but the uniforms, commercials, websites, trade stands, buildings and other image determinants must also meet the norms set by the house style designer. It is more than noticeable that nearly all Dutch federal departments and ministries, provinces, cities and townships, even the police, customs and local public transport, down to and including the museums, present themselves to the world with a modern house style. In the Netherlands, everything is designed.

Trend sensitive magazines
A good designer is one who is frequently copied. Eclecticism, imitating and going on to surpass the inspiration source are amongst the most elemental of graphic design functions. Magazines for and by designers, such as "View on Colors", "Mediamatic", "Sec" and "Re-Daily Life" represent the avant-garde of new taste in colour, typography, photography or the use of pioneering, interactive media. They often bear references to the French "Purple". Public magazines are by definition trend followers. Particularly in media such as BlvD. and Dutch, focused on youth culture, the eye is met with a computer-generated feast in multi-layered layouts of photography and conceptual typography that lean towards the dynamics of MTV, computer games and websites. But in the more earnest periodicals, the architecture magazine. "Forum", for example, fashion and the spirit of the times certainly play a role, which is why their designers are frequently changed.