Surviving Swiss
With the legends Armin Hofmann Wim Crouwel and Wolfgang Weingart
Surviving Swiss
Surviving Swiss Published in Asia in 2017 by Page One Publishing Pte Ltd 20 Kaki Bukit View, Kaki Bukit Techpark II, Singapore 415956 Tel: (65) 6742-2088 Fax: (65) 6744-2088 enquiries@pageonegroup.com www.pageonegroup.com Sponsored by Temasek Polytechnic Edited and produced by Temasek Polytechnic School of Design – Communication Design 1415 TD05 Chief Editor: Isabel Tay 1402210G@student.tp.edu.sg www.tp.edu.sg ISBN 978-981-4394-90-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. For information, contact Page One Publishing Pte Ltd. Printed and bound in Singapore
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COLOUR
PAGE
About Armin Hofmann Armin Hofmann’s experience with colour Tips for young designers
10 12 18
GRID
About Wim Crouwel Wim Crouwel’s experience with grid Tips for young designers
22 24 28
TYPOGRAPHY
About Wolfgang Weingart Wolfgang Weingart’s experience with typography Tips for young designers
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SWISS STYLE
The International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style developed in Switzerland in the 1950s that emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objectivity.
INTRODUCTION
This book will help you survive the Swiss Style with three basic elements. This survival guide gives you relatable experiences and tips from three Swiss Style legends: Armin Hofmann, Wim Crouwel and Wolfgang Weingart on how these basic elements aided in their success as a designer.
ARMIN HOFMANN “Another reason for my interest in the use of blackand-white in design lies in my intense preoccupation with the forms and analysis of signs and symbols”
COLOUR
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Armin Hofmann About Armin Hofmann has been described as one of the most outstanding personalities in Swiss design graphic history. He was born in Switzerland, 29 June, 1920. After studying at the School of Arts and Crafts in Zurich, he worked as a lithographer in Basel and Bern, and opened a studio in Basel. In 1947, he began teaching at the Basel School of Arts and Crafts after meeting Emil Ruder on a train and learning that the school was looking for a teacher.
Hans Arp, Emil Ruder, Armin Hofmann (Left to Right) in 1961 at the concreting of Arp column in the School of Design, Basel yard
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Armin Hofmann was one of the great legends who helped shape modernist-inspired graphic design beyond recognition. Without ‘The International Typographic Style’, also known as the Swiss Style of design, contemporary graphic design would be almost unrecognizable. The readability and cleanliness of the style as well as its asymmetric layouts, use of a grids and sans-serif typefaces have helped define how we design today. Designers today are still taking the best elements from this era of design to create a whole new contemporary, visual aesthetic.
Right: Yale/Brissago sketch, 1986 Far Right: Line exercise, Graphic Design Manual
Graphic designer and teacher Armin Hofmann does not fit easily into any category – and certainly not the Swiss Style drawer in which he is often wrongly placed. ‘I was never impressed by the Concrete movement’, he said ten years ago at an exhibition of his poster works held at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Interestingly, however, his visual vocabulary does indeed have features in common with the Concrete style developed in the 1950s. For example, he evinces a preference for sans-serif fonts, grid-based design, the use of typography as an essential design element, and a preference for photography rather than drawings or illustrations. And certain parallels also exist in Hofmann’s radical approach to form and colour.
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Armin Hofmann’s Experience with colour To appreciate fully what Hofmann achieved—what he stood for—we need to remember that his dedication to visual resolution represented a larger vision of civilized society. He belongs to a generation that sought to find a new visual language that would be appropriate for a complex technological world. “What few people have realised about Hofmann is that behind the artistic beauty of his design was a strong conviction about cultural, moral and social issues,” said Friedman in 1994.
What truly distinguishes Hofmann from the Concrete is his artistic posture: he rejects all dogmatism, and stands apart through his own open way of thinking and creating. Hofmann was constantly evolving, both personally and professionally. In contrast to the approach taken by the Constructivists, most of Hofmann’s posters allow a symbolic interpretation. Each of his designs explores the possibilities inherent in visual communication and calls them into question.
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It is easy today to underestimate the impression that these posters made in the streets. His sparing use of black and white had an argumentative and even ethical purpose. His work, especially his poster designs, always emphasized an economical and efficient use of colour and typefaces. This was in reaction to what Hofmann called the “trivialization of colour.” He felt that if you can create drama, tension and expression with black and white, going on to color would be an easier way to do it. The whole point was to do it with minimal means, clarity and simplicity. Being able to understand these simple elements would allow you have the capacity to do more complicated things. His commonly used combination of black and white also represented a kind of opposition to the colourful panorama then common. The effect was that black and white called one’s attention more quickly. These profound works have been exhibited in major galleries all around the world, including the New York Museum of Modern Art.
Far left: “Giselle, Basler Freilichtspiele,” photolithograph, 1959 Left: “Stadt Theatre Basel ” offset lithograph, 1963 Right: “Tell ” , poster, 1963
“When reduced to black and white, the processes of contrast and confrontation become clearer, more understandable, and easier to learn—as much for the designer as for the audience”.
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Until now, attention to the Swiss graphic design pioneer Armin Hofmann’s oeuvre has focused on his posters, which are largely in black and white. The exhibition at Galerie Susanna Kulli now offers the first in-depth look at his intense engagement with color. Its centerpiece is a portfolio of silkscreen prints that is unique in Hofmann’s oeuvre. The silkscreen portfolio is complemented by writings and sketches from Hofmann’s private archive and problems he assigned in his classes. The project’s focus is on a portfolio of silkscreen prints Armin Hofmann created over the course of ten years, from 1989 until 1999. Top Left: “Armin Hofmann — Farbe”, 2012 Bottom Left and Right: The silkscreen portfolio: A pivotal work, 1989 to 1999
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Recollections of four of his former students— Philip Burton, April Greiman, Aki Nurosi, and Moritz Zwimpfer—open up new perspectives on Hofmann’s close engagement with issues of color. Each of the twelve plates in the portfolio, created between 1989 and 1999, shows four triangles arranged in a square. By eliminating light-dark contrasts, Hofmann was able to focus on color as such and the contrasts specific to it—cold – warm and luminous–dull, as well as contrasts in hue and quantity. As Hofmann emphasizes, the twelve plates should not be regarded as final results; they are guideposts in a process, and their order is variable.
The reduction to a single problem held constant led Hofmann to a more nuanced vision and a growing awareness of the sensual qualities of color: “When you work in this manner, you become ever more refined, more sensitive.”
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Hofmann sought to raise his students’ understanding of the effects of color. This was not an authoritative system of color; rather, he sought to reconcile the individual qualities in color perception. This was not an authoritative system of color; rather, he sought to reconcile the individual qualities in color perception. Of particular interest in connection with the silkscreen portfolio, which Hofmann describes as “a sort of account of my pedagogical activities,” is a problem he assigned in a class in 1984.
Far Left and Top Left: Colour sketches Bottom Left: Armin Hofmann — Farbe Top Right: Architectural intervention / triangles Bottom Right: Black and white sketch
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Art for public spaces was the only field of his practice in which Hofmann used color as a defining artistic element. As in the silkscreen portfolio and in his classes on color, the study of the relativity of chromatic values was central. The critical examination of the role of the mark in its context pervades Hofmann’s entire oeuvre. The engagement with color added another layer to this complex issue and may be seen as bringing further nuance and elaboration to his teaching of form.
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Tip for young designers
You can’t be a great designer unless you open up your eyes and look at the world around you.
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Look at the architecture fashion colours it affects all what we do. Armin Hofmann
WIM CROUWEL “The grid is like the lines on a football field. You can play a great game in the grid or a lousy game. But the goal is to play a really fine game.�
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WIM CROUWEL About Wim Crouwel, born in Groningen (the Netherlands) in 1928 is a remarkable and inspiring figure with an inventive spirit and vision, vigorous and always distinguished. He trained at the Art Academy Minerva from 1946 to 1949, and after completing his military service, started his professional life as an abstract painter. He studied at the Amsterdam Art Academy from 1952 to 1953 and during that time joined an exhibition firm in 1952, where he gained his first experience of the possibilities of graphic design. Crouwel began his career in design as an exhibition designer. Through collaborating with designers with different disciplines he diversified his practice, giving him a platform to work on a larger scale. He began working for an exhibition company, Enderberg, learning from the designer Dick Ellfers. He then set up his own studio with the interior designer Kho Liang Ie.
Through attending evening classes at the Academy for Applied Arts he learned the principles of typography through his tutor, Charles Jongejans, who also exposed him to modernist graphic design for the first time. As a graphic designer, Crouwel established a consistent and distinctive visual language creating striking design solutions for a range of clients.
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All the members of Total Design, 1982
The formal nature of Swiss design deeply affected Crouwel - clarity, structure and the employment of grids became key aspects in his visual language. Strong relationships were formed with like minded Swiss designers early in his career and he became good friends with Gerard Ifert, Karl Gerstner and Josef MĂźller-Brockmann.
In 1963, Together with colleagues Benno wissing, Friso Kramer and Dick & Paul Schwartz, Crouwel started a design studio named Total Design. Total Design was the Netherlands’ first multidisciplinary design studio, which was to become a dominant force in Dutch design. Through their work, Crouwel and his colleagues had significant influence on the national and cultural identity of the Netherlands. In 1972, Crouwel became a part-time professor at Delft Technical University (TU Delft), and in 1980 he left Total Design when he was appointed a full-time professor at TU. However, Crouwel was still a Consultant in Total Design from 1980 to 1985. In 1985 he was named Director of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. He consolidated his longtime commitment to education in assuming the Private Chair at Erasmus University, Rotterdam from 1987 to 1993.
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Wim Crouwel’s Experience with Grids Crouwel was very interested in architecture and developed a strong sense of spatial awareness. Soon this led to commissions for cultural institutions such as the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. When Edy de Wilde, director of the Van Abbemuseum, became director of the Stedelijk Museum in 1963, he took Wim Crouwel with him. Until the end of De Wilde’s directorship in 1985, Crouwel was solely responsible for the Stedelijk’s identity and for almost all posters and catalogues. While at the Stedelijk, Crouwel developed a unique grid
Posters, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 1969
system that acted as a template for the museum’s graphic identity, which created visual consistency for the museum. In a career spanning more than 60 years, Crouwel was highly influenced by the Swiss design movement of the 1950s and when he became a graphic designer, he was known to his friends as ‘grid-nick’: “I developed a kind of grid in which my design would take shape. It’s very architectural because I’m influenced as much by architecture as by other graphic designers and artists.”
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Crouwel’s use of grids in graphic design was more or less developed by the Swiss designers — Max Bill, Karl Gerstner and Josef Muller-Brockmann. He was highly influenced by them as to him, grid was a way to structure typography and he couldn’t work without one. To Crouwel, a grid was a method to bring structure into his work, and it’s just a question of lines that follow the typographic system, and the ‘point system’ that you want to use. There is flexibility in grids as you can have a variation in the number of columns yet still bring about relation and familiarity in each page.
Top Left and Far Right: Poster sketches
“Every now and then I had to make compromises, but always within my system. [...] Aesthetically, it could be better if I didn’t stick to my grid. But the grid was number one for me. So I never let myself go for aesthetic reason – and sometimes that was difficult.”
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Besides print-work, Crouwel has designed several font sets, of which the New Alphabet (1967) is best known. This typefaces was developed after seeing the first digital typesetters at a print exhibition in Germany. The digital production of the Garamond, as presented on this exhibition looked horrible to him. The rounding of several sizes of a typeface were not alike, because of the small amount of pixels used, as you could see when the letters were enlarged. Embracing the modernity in the 1960s, with the dawn of the space age and computer technology in mind, Crouwel thought it would be better to design a typeface that was suitable for this machine instead of forcing it to use the typefaces we knew. He drew the New Alphabet, a highly abstract font, based on a dot-matrix system. With its straight lines, 90 degree angles and 45 degree rounding, either big or small, it always looked exactly the same. The face was as high as it was wide, thus lining in every way so it would fit in every grid system. To simplify the design further, all of the glyphs were set in lowercase.
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This typeface was merely developed as a theory, a direction of thinking. It wasn’t meant for actual use. Crouwel was given proposals to make New Alphabet into a more readable typeface. However, it didn’t bother Crouwel at all. He loved the whole abstract feeling to it and even made the letters the same width so that they don’t only line up in one direction, but in all directions, which made it completely unreadable. This illegible font challenged the design establishment and provoked debate, which Crouwel was happy to engage in, having openly admitted to placing aesthetics above function. The New Alphabet was reused by Brett Wickens and Peter Saville for the Joy Division album Substance in the late 1980s and then digitized and made available for use in 1997 by The Foundry.
In 1985 Crouwel’s career took a new direction following appointment as a director at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. In this role he commissioned the British studio 8vo to fulfill the design requirements of the museum. He retired from this position in 1993. Crouwel continues to design intermittently on a diverse range of projects for both graphic and exhibition design commissions. (Left Page) Centre: New Alphabet, 1967 Top Right: Enlarged version of Garamond Bottom Right: New Alphabet exploration (Right Page) Top Right: New Alphabet sketch Bottom Left: Joy Division record cover, 1980
Tip for young designers
Keep your radar turning and pick up everything that you love,
but be very sure you find your own way in it. Wim Crouwel
WOLFGANG WEINGART “For me, typography is a triangular relationship between design ideas, typographic elements, and printing technique.”
TYPO
GRAPHY
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Wolfgang Weingart About He started it all. It was he who ignited the spark of ‘typographic anarchy’ that exploded on the verge of the nineteen nineties. It was he who fathered what was subsequently dubbed ‘Swiss Punk’, ‘New Wave’ or whatever you care to call it – perhaps even post-modernism. His name is Wolfgang Weingart. Weingart was born 1941 in Constance at the northern foot of the Alps in southern Germany. It was obvious early on that Weingart was drawn to the mechanical world, having once taken apart his own bicycle just to reassemble it.
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He enrolled in a two-year course in applied art and design at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart in 1958. There he discovered the school printing facilities and, at the age of 17, set metal type for the first time. After graduating, he undertook a rigorous apprenticeship as a typesetter at Ruwe Printing in Stuttgart, where he met house designer Karl-August Hanke, a former student at the Basel School of Design. It was Hanke who became a mentor to the young Weingart, introducing him to design being done outside of Germany, particularly in Switzerland, where Ruder, Armin Hofmann and Karl Gerstner were making work that would come to be referred to as International Style. After working at a typesetting firm, Weingart decided to further his education by attending the Basel School of Design. Under the instruction of Armin Hoffmann and Emil Ruder, Weingart was introduced to Swiss typography, or what is also known as the International Style. This influence would later play a large role in Weingart’s designs and typography.
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Wolfgang Weingart’s Experience with Typography Since the first day when he arrived at Basel as a student, it was clear that Weingart was an inquisitive student. In a class he had with Armin Hoffmann, the students were asked to work on a line composition using ruling pens. Instead of drawing the lines as he was told, he went over to the type shop and made a contraption that he could use to print lines. Weingart’s ingenuity is simply impressive: he took a plank of wood, screwed L-shaped hooks on it in a grid format, then turned them at 0, 45 and 90 degree angles to form compositions, inked it and printed it on a letterpress. He screwed the hooks into the wood at different levels so some received ink at typehigh and some did not.
There is no doubt that Weingart bent the rule of classical Swiss typography – both literally and figuratively. When he was an apprentice at a letterpress workshop, he was pondering about why the brass rules that were used to print tabular matter always had to be straight and at 90-degree angles to each other. He created highly abstract letterpress prints with rules shaped into elegant curves, almost resembling rolling hills in a beautiful countryside.
Far Right: Composition sketches of M Bottom Left: Linear image printed with the help of the device with hooks, 1964
“I became nuts (in a good way) about Swiss typography. But its strict limitations stifled my playful, inquisitive,experimental temperament.”
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One of the major ideas behind the International Style was the belief that all typography should be “unobtrusive and transparent” in order to clearly communicate the design’s message. While he had been trained under this school of thought, Weingart had no difficulty breaking away from it, and at times, doing completely the opposite within his work. Weingart became interested in how far he could push the qualities of type while still maintaining it’s purpose. While the International Style called for type to be simply functional, Weingart called for typography to be both functional and noteworthy. Designers should ignore the “traditional” rules of layout and feel free to experiment with how type interacts with the rest of the composition.
Far Right: Composition sketches of M Left: Compositions of M
Technological progression eventually led Weingart to experiment with photographic reproduction processes. Not satisfied with the rather limited range of sizes that metal type offered, Weingart began to explore the possibilities of the repro camera. He found that with the repro camera, a more fluid range of type sizes was possible. Working alongside Emil Ruder’s class at Basel, Weingart was able to continue pursuing his letter ‘M’ series of typographic studies that he had begun when he was working part time at a typesetting firm. He printed a few letter Ms by letterpress, pasted them down on a cube, and photographed them from different perspectives. This unique process yielded dramatic black and white letter-forms in perspective and formed the basis of many engaging abstract compositions.
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The experiments he had begun during his apprenticeship intensified. He used curved metal rules, creating circular compositions embedded in plaster. He experimented with interwoven geometric text composing influenced by ancient stone construction in the Middle East, where he had first traveled in the early 1960s. His classes themselves became workshops to test and expand models for a new typography. Wolfgang Weingart is regarded as the “enfant terrible” of modern Swiss typography. At an early stage he broke with the established rules: He freed letters from the shackles of the design grid, spaced, underlined or reshaped them and reorganized type-setting. In the 1970s he began to translate halftone films into collages, in this way anticipating the digital sampling of the post-modern “New Wave”. As a typography teacher at Schule für Gestaltung Basel Weingart shaped several generations of designers from 1968 onwards.
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Weingart started a new design life at the Basel School as a “guest listener.” He soon found, however, that this International Style had limits, so he started to get rebellious and began his own personal work. He took ‘Swiss Typography’ as his starting point, but then he blew it apart, never forcing any style upon his students. He never intended to create a ‘style’. It just happened that the students picked up—and misinterpreted—a so-called ‘Weingart style’ and spread it around.
“I was motivated to provoke to stodgy profession and to stretch the type shop’s capabilities to the breaking point, and, finally, to prove once again that typography is an art” (Left Page) Centre: Weingart showing his sketches in Basel Bottom Right: Issue 10, 1973 (Right Page) Right: Typographic Progress, Nr 1. Organized Text Structures, 1974 Left: Typographic Progress, Nr 3. Calender Text Structures, 1971-1972
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Weingart insistently sought new ways of creating images, adopting the halftone screens and benday films used in photo-mechanical processes as his new tools beginning in the mid-1970s. He used the repro camera to stretch, blur and cut type—a radical new approach for marrying continuous-tone images and letters. He would boast that his design process relied solely on these film manipulations and overlapping colors, seen perhaps most strikingly in his work for the Basel Kunstkredit—black-and-white world-format posters designed between 1976 and 1979 and a series of color posters made between 1980 and 1983. Through his experimentations, Weingart was inventing his own visual language. Top Left: Weingart Typography Workshop Bottom Left: Kunstkredit Basel, 1978/79
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In the midst of his emotionally satisfying work one will also occasionally encounter work in his repertoire that is undeniably Swiss in its original flavor – calm, rational and clear. ‘That’s my schizophrenic personality,’ says Weingart. As much as he tries to be expressive with type, he feels that there are times when the clients’ wishes and the users’ needs are of a more urgent priority. Weingart simply knows when he has to put his ego aside and emphasize on solving particular design problems. It is the tension between his desire to express and his consideration for communication that creates this interesting mix of work and his perpetually inquisitive working ethos. Top Left: Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt, 1977/78 Top Right: Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt, 1982/83 Bottom Left: “The Swiss Poster 1900-1983”, 1983
Tip for young designers
What’s the use of being legible,
when nothing inspires you to take notice of it? Wolfgang Weingart
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge our gratitude to the artists and designers for their generous contributions of images, ideas and concepts. We are very grateful to many other people whose names do not appear on the credits but who provided assistance and support. Thanks also go to people who have worked hard on the book and put ungrudging efforts into it. Without you all, the creation and on going development of this book would not have been possible and thank you for sharing your innovation and creativity with all our readers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Armin Hofmann: http://www.swissdesignawards.ch/grandprix/2013/armin-hofmann/ http://www.aiga.org/medalist-arminhofmann/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSrNGbwVKQs http://thinkingform.com/2011/06/29/thinking-armin-hofmann-06-29-2011/ http://www.designersjournal.net/jottings/designheroes/heroes-armin-hofmann http://www.printmag.com/imprint/armin-hofmann-in-color/ http://designapplause.com/2013/armin-hofmann-farbecolor-ad-museum/39820/ Wim Crouwel: http://neringaplangeresearch.wordpress.com/category/5-wim-crouwel/ http://www.iconofgraphics.com/Wim-Crouwel/ http://www.designersandbooks.com/designer/bio/wim-crouwel http://phildobinson.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/wim-crouwel-at-design-museum/’ Wim Crouwel: A graphic odyssey catalogue Wolfgang Weingart: http://jenniferfidler.com/images/wolfgangweingart.swf http://www.typetoken.net/publication/wolfgang-weingart-weingart-typography-museum-of-designzurich-%E2%80%94-my-way-to-typography-lars-muller-publishers/ http://keithtam.net/writings/ww/ww.html http://www.designhistory.org/PostModern_pages/NewWave.html http://www.museum-gestaltung.ch/en/exhibitions/review/2014/weingart-typography/ http://www.tm-research-archive.ch/interviews/wolfgang-weingart/ http://vimeo.com/34061586 https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2368/2118909042_f6037e36e4.jpg
This book is an essential tool to aid your learning of Swiss Style. Through the experiences of these three Swiss legends, you’ll get a glimpse of how they gained success through this style in their career.
ISBN 9789814394901
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394901
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