Experimental Jetset is an Independant graphic design studio, comprised of only three member, Marieke Stolk, Danny van Dungen and Erwin Brinkers.
Based in Amsterdam and founded in 1997, the trio are graduates of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.
There work is largly influenced by the Modernist movement, and is eveident in the almost exclusive use of Helvetica.
Experimental Jetset a well-known innovation in the use of text and typographic tools commonly used in the production of large street installations.
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The Dutch graphic design studio known for their innovative use of typography and text, as applied in printed matter and site-specific.
Designers in their works transmit messages of subversive and subversive character in a sans serif type managing only the scale, alignment and color of the text, sometimes even layering each other’s lines of text or letters in words.
The studio is focussed on printed matter and site specific installations. They way they descride their methodology is “turning language into objects�. The member taught at GRA from 2000 to 2014, and continue to teach at Werkplaats Typografie, starting in 2013 to the present.
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‘out of fashion’ (2011) A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa
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Experimental Jetset about evolution of their studio
“We all met at the rietveld academy, when we were students. at their graduation project, marieke and danny were working on the redesign of blvd (a dutch pop-culture magazine, now defunct), and they asked erwin who was in another class (a year below), to help them out. this all happened in 1997.
in general the three of us do everything together. we aren’t really proper football fans, but as a model for the studio, we always have to think about an interview we once saw on dutch TV, in which legendary player johan cruijff explained the concept of ‘totaal voetbal’ (‘total football’), and that was really inspirational. total
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football is a system where a player who moves out of his position can be replaced by any other player from the same team. so the roles aren’t fixed; any player has the ability to be attacker, defender or midfielder.”
in short, our ideal is to stay away from fixed roles. when dealing with stress and deadlines, we sometimes fall back into certain roles, but we try very hard to avoid that. our intention is that the workload is divided equally, and that each one of us has more or less the same set of skills.”
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Experimental Jetset about Helvetica
“ it’s obviously not true that we always use helvetica – but nevertheless, we can’t deny that the late-modernist graphic landscape in which we grew up (we’re talking about the netherlands in the ’70s here) had a big influence on us. As a consequence, we feel as if this late-modernist vocabulary (of which helvetica is undeniably a part) has become our authentic language, our mother tongue. It’s our everyday way of talking, our natural tone of voice. And it’s only logical that this late-modernist dialect can be detected all throughout our work. we’re simply not the kind of people who feel it’s necessary to suppress one’s own dialect.
But that doesn’t mean we always use the same typeface. Especially when you look at the graphic identities we designed for museums and cultural institutes, you’ll notice that we have
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used various typefaces, often for very specific conceptual reasons. for example, for the graphic identity we designed in 2004 for stedelijk museum CS (SMCS), we specifically used univers, to refer to the history of the institute. And for the graphic identity we created in 2007 for le cent quatre (104), we used futura, so that the 104 logo could really be ’embedded’ in the typeface. in other words, it’s a total myth that we always use helvetica – but it’s an amusing myth, we have to admit.
As for the specific version of neue haas grotesk (NHG) that we used for the graphic identity of the whitney… we met christian schwartz back in 2009, during a type conference in wellington, new zealand; and during our conversation, christian mentioned the version of nhg he was working on. Two years later, when we started to work on the whitney, we remembered this conversation, and realized that NHG might be the right typeface for this project.
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‘zoo, or the letter z’ (2012) A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa
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‘re-action’ (2011) A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa
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Experimental Jetset about developments in graphic design in the last five years
“We feel there’s a really strange discrepancy going on – while young designers seem to be getting more and more intellectual and progressive, a lot of cultural institutes are actually trying to achieve a more populist tone, and getting more conservative. They seem to move in opposite directions – and we have no idea how this rift can ever be solved.
Young designers are currently producing a lot of very interesting work – but this production takes place on a more subcultural, isolated level: in the spheres of self-publishing, small exhibitions, underground projects. To survive, these young designers are either forced to work (or worse,
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to intern for free) for large corporate agencies, or they have to find a ‘day-time job’, outside of the field of graphic design. There seem to be fewer and fewer opportunities nowadays for young designers to just start their own small, independent studios, and inject their ideas straight into the public space – and we think that’s a real shame.
In harsh times like these, we think it’s really important for independent designers and small studios to stick together, and keep an open mind towards each other. Above all, we should maintain some sense of solidarity, of dignity. We might have our aesthetic or conceptual differences, but in the end, we’re all in the same boat. It’s so easy to constantly attack each other, but all this energy can be better put to use trying to actually survive.”
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Featured work & References
The studio is focused on printed matter and site specific installations. They way they descride their methodology is “turning language into objects”. Featured work in group exhibitions include ‘Graphic Design: Now in Production’ Walker Art Center 2011, Ecstatic Alphabets / Heaps of Language’ Casco Projects, Utrecht 2002 and Two or Three Things I know About Provo’ W139, Amsterdam, 2011.
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In 2011, the MoMA acquired Experimental Jetset for a large selection of their work, permanently. The member taught at GRA from 2000 to 2014, and continue to teach at Werkplaats Typografie, starting in 2013 to the present.
WEB: http://projet.zamartin.ru WEB: http://www.designishistory.com WEB: http://www.designindaba.com WEB: http://www.core77.com
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‘the art of inhabitation’ (2011) A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa
‘common grounds’ (2011) A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa
‘panels’ (2010) A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa
‘club céramique’ (2010) A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa
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Anzhela Tejada Janena Benedict / 2017