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GUIDING A NEW TRADITION JAN TSCHICHOLD
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PREFACE BY MIEKE GERRITZEN
MUSEUM AND MEDIA I have been the director of the Graphic Design Museum for two months. It has a new building in the centre of Breda with beautiful, large halls, a museum lab and knowledge centre, a cellar with climate control for the collection of Dutch graphic design, a museum shop and a café. The need for culture is increasing and museums are becoming important now that we spend the whole day networking at the computer. Our lives have become automated. Technology knows no limits. The museum reacts to these events. It tells our history and shows us where we are now. The Graphic Design Museum is at the centre of modern media. New technologies determine the shape of presentation and archiving. Databases are being filled. The museum is the platform for graphic design, the profession of visual communication, part of the global network, a worldwide sanctuary for text and image, for dynamism and change.
The Museum
In this first Graphic Design Magazine, we will be looking at the theme of standardisation in graphic design.
Society as a whole has become dependent on communication and network technology. We communicate primarily via screens and on those screens, everything is graphic design. An ever-growing number of people are involved in this - just look at the images on Flickr and YouTube. Form Follows Format Designs are made with standard software programmes. And these images are viewed using standard media such as the web, the TV and printed material. How did this culture of standardisation arise? What is now the share of technology and what belongs to the creative process of the designer? The Graphic Design Museum with its magnificent high rooms is the first museum in the world for graphic design. The museum is in the centre of Breda and exhibits the broad and dynamic area of graphic design. The Graphic Design Museum places current graphic design in an historical and cultural context, open to the world and technology. It represents all forms of media, from printed material to interactive web
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The German typographer Jan Tschichold popularised, for example, the A4 in 1928. He was also for quite some time responsible for the design of the Penguin series. This series of paperbacks became famous because of its recognisable covers. But we also look at current practises and view the design of websites as aesthetic objects, stripped of their information. Attractive sober images, areas of colour, arrange hierarchically. The rhythm, the structure and the grid are recognisable. The colours determine the identity. To what extent are technological standards responsible for the way we experience aesthetics? ■ Mieke Gerritzen took up the position of Director of the Graphic Design Museum on 1 January 2009. The exhibition Who Sets the Standard? can be seen from 28 February to 7 June in the Graphic Design Museum.
design. Graphic design has been around for about 100 years and has built up a rich tradition in the Netherlands with internationally renowned designers. In the twentieth century, graphic design was a fairly prescribed area with a small group of professional practitioners such as Piet Zwart, Willem Sandberg, Wim Crouwel and Anthon Beeke. The Graphic Design Museum offers an international podium for established designers
and is, in addition, a platform for new top talent. Children can become designers in the museum and publish using various forms, colours, materials, signs and pictograms. The young are confronted in a fascinating way with the way famous Dutch and international designers have struggled with the major issues of this period. Adults get deeper insight into the past and present of the image culture ■
EXHIBITION 28 february until 7 june 2009 Who Sets the Standard? In Who Sets the Standard? , the Graphic Design Museum shows how the influence of the emerging industrialisation in the previous century and the technological development have become decisive for the image in the design.
28 february until 7 june 2009 Jan Tschichold: Guiding A New Tradition With Jan Tschichold: Guiding A New Tradition, the Graphic Design Museum is offering a retrospective of the work of typographer Jan Tschichold.
Jan Tschichold Guiding a New Tradition Jan Tschichold (Leipzig 1902-Locarno 1974) can be seen as a protagonist of modernistic design. His publication Die NeueTypographie (1928) is the manifesto for modernistic typography and is still read and imitated. The influence of Tschichold is evident in current design in the use of fixed paper sizes such as DIN-A4. What drove this exceptional designer, typographer and essayist? The exhibition Jan Tschichold, Guiding a New Tradition shows how like-minded people from various expressive disciplines inspired Jan Tschichold in his modernistic views. One can also see how the classically-trained Tschichold never completely discarded traditional ideas. The impression that Tschichold radically distanced himself from his modernistic principles in 1933 is put into perspective in this exhibition. There is no doubt, however, that Tschichold has had a considerable influence on several generations of graphic designers. The exhibitions shows, in addition to work by Jan Tschichold, work by people such as El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy Nagy, Piet Zwart, Herbert Bayer, Willem Sandberg, Otto Treuman, Joseph M端ller-Brockmann, Max Bill, Benno Wissing and Wim Crouwel.
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EXHIBITION 28 february until 7 june 2009 Template Culture: Form Follows Format Designer Hendrik-Jan Grievink provides a visual reaction to the Jan Tschichold exhibition: Guiding A New Tradition and on the theme of standardisation in design.
A bitter struggle about the sans-serif letter Karin van der Heiden Shortly after the Second World War, a heated debate flared up in Switzerland between typographer Jan Tschichold and architect, artist and graphic designer Max Bill. The stage was the professional magazine Schweizer Graphische Mitteilungen, in which Bill, in an article in April 1946, fiercely attacked the changed ideas of Tschichold. Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) is one of the most important protagonists of modernistic design. In the twenties of the previous century, he published various articles in which he explained his principles about modern typography. These include the use of sans-serif fonts and a noncentred (asymmetric) make-up of (title) pages. These ideas were partly motivated by new technical possibilities, but also by the need to transfer information quickly and easily. Tschichol thus also propagated the use of standard paper sizes (such as the DIN A sizes) for all printed material. Although the ideas of Tschichold were frequently applied in the 30s and 40s - particularly in Switzerland - Tschichold himself increasingly turned his back on them. The year 1933 is a clear breaking-point. Under the regime of the new Chancellor Hitler, he was arrested in Germany and held for six weeks under suspicion of Bolshevism. After his release, he fled the very same day to Basel in Switzerland and never returned to Germany again.
One of the Swiss disciples of Tschichold’s former modernistic principles, Max Bill (19081994) reacted to this criticism several months later in a long article in Schweizer Graphische Mitteilungen. It is clear that for Bill the New Typography meant liberation from the oldfashioned decorative and non-functional style. That Tschichold, former protagonist of modernism, should now become promoter of the traditional, clearly caused friction. Tschichold’s rebuttal was no less fervent. First he described his long experience in the field of typography and his motivation for once again embracing the ‘classical’ language of design. Tschichold points out that Bill is actually not a specialist when he calls ‘that architect and artist from Zurich’ an amateur. According to Tschichold, Bill was now advocating the same naive appreciation for technical progress that he had had in the period 1924-1935. Tschichold also claimed that the New Typography, as practised by Bill, showed similarities with the German tendency for the absolute, expressed a military desire to regulate and laid a claim on the almighty. Although Tschichold receives acclaim for his restyling of Penguin Books in London, his ‘old’ modern principles find disciples in Switzerland and, in the sixties, also among Dutch designers. The departure of Tschichold in 1947 from Switzerland to London provoked from Max Bill the remark: ‘We have now got rid of the devil that we earlier invited in.’
During a lecture for the Swiss Graphic Design Association in 1945, Tschichold was extremely critical of the New Typography. He was by then completely convinced of the functional added value of classical serif fonts and symmetrical lay-out. According to him, asymmetry is only of use in advertising, but it is not functional for book design.
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EXHIBITION
TemplateCulture Form Follows Format At the invitation of the Graphic Design Museum, designer Hendrik Jan Grievink has supplied a visual commentary to the exhibition Jan Tschichold, Guiding a New Tradition. According to him, the legacy of Tschichold can mainly be seen in the current template culture, where technical standards, recognition and reproducibility determine to a large degree the visual character of the information. Famous and less-famous websites are stripped by him of their content and reduced to aesthetic objects. The result is an alienating view on the design of the worldwide web of today. How standard are today’s standards? What is the aesthetic legacy of modernism in current web design?
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ESSAY BY GEERT LOVINK
STANDARDS FORALL ‘Whoever sets the standard has the power.’
or bad but the creative skills of the filmmaker to tell the story in such a way that we immediately forget the technical details. At least, this is the way we are repeatedly inclined to think. Who really understands the degree to which the browser decides what we get to see on the internet?
the holes and bugs in the protocols? What do we do with our acquired insight into the architecture of search engines, mobile telephone aesthetics and network culture?
The hard reality once preached by the historic avant-garde is still valid, no matter how disastrous the implementation of utoWho will finally map the influence that pian programmes may have been. There is the monopolist Microsoft has on our an increasing number of artists who have visual culture? Marshall McLuhan’s sixties’ the ambition to sketch the framework of statement that ‘the medium is the message’ society. They design new rules and do not It is tempting to believe that content, and remains a misunderstood speculation, simply produce cool design. What we must not form, determines our lives. The stanwhich has proved not untrue but rather look for are the contemporary variants dard height of a computer table is 72 cm. unbearable. The attention paid in the media of Google. This media giant, with internet But who bothers about that? Isn’t it about to background standards and protocols pioneer and domain name boss Vint Cerf the quality of the work that comes out of is minimal. Instead, we gaze starry eyed at (jointly) at the helm, is a perfect example the computer? An easy-on-the-eye font the whirlwind lives of the celebrity and the of how economic, political and cultural for a novel is nice enough, but what really mico-opinions of the columnist. It is this power can be built up using technical laws counts is the writer’s gift for entertaining us. sort of interference that reassures us. But (algorythms). We can do that as well. We when will the discomfort with the artist as have reached the end of a long period in For many years, philosophers have been an ‘eye candy maker’ actually emerge? which the workings of power must first be casting doubt on this common identificaunderstood and subsequently dismantled. tion with meaning. If we wish to understand While the web seesaws 2.0 packs up and Before we concentrate on open standards, anything about how our complex technical down in the info conjuncture, solid studies we should open a public debate about this society is made up, we must pay attention show that things are not run by the hip matter. Can the loose networks of today to the structures that surround us, from windbags but by grey engineers. Their organise themselves in such a way that they industry norms to building regulations, exercise of power is no longer part of a set the rules for tomorrow’s communicasoftware icons and internet protocols. If we conspiracy. Control is no longer top down tion? Yes We Can: Set the Standard ■ _________________________________ wish a different society, with more equality but from inside out; it is decentralised and Geert Lovink is internet critic and president and style, it is not enough to think differmachine-driven. This makes it more difently; the framework of that thinking must ficult to decide who really calls the shots. It of the Institute For Network Cultures. also be overturned. If you want to make a seems that power is no longer in the hands www.networkcultures.org _________________________________ contribution that really makes a difference, of people, but manifests itself in software, then you will have to design the standard surveillance cameras, invisible small chips. for communication of the future yourself. This is the politics of the standard: those Working out who defines and manages the who are able to determine the outline technological standards can become a new of the form determine like no other the method of power analysis. ‘Protocol’ once culture of tomorrow. referred to a tape with verification and date stuck to a papyrus roll. Now, ‘protocol’ is Yet only a few attach any belief to the promoted to a decisive collection of rules deeper truth that hides behind our techni- on which society revolves. How can we cal infrastructure. The idea that, when get a grip on the invisible techno-class that it actually comes down to it, a closed prescribes these rules? Is it sufficient to company of technocrats decides our urge participation? Demonstrating the window on the world causes concern. It is undemocratic character of the closed not supposed to be the HD camera or the consultation is one thing, but are alternative animation program that makes a film good models available? Is it sufficient to discover
Strangely enough, this view has few disciples. We prefer to believe that opinion makers control the political agenda.
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Jan Tschichold Posters Phoebus Palast
Hendrik-Jan Grievink Image research Template Culture
COLLECTION article
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history
New in the collection
■ The Technical
The Graphic Design Museum has acquired part of the archive of Total Design for the period 1963-1990 as a long-term loan from the NAGO. The ‘Association for Total Design NV’, Total Design for short, was founded in 1963 by Paul and Dick Schwarz, Wim Crouwel, Benno Wissing and Friso Kramer. This archive contains reference copies (small printed material, books and posters) and a large quantity of image material. Parts of this collection can be consulted in the Museum Lab; an appointment is required.
■ Structure ■ of the Archiving ■ Archive ■ Also Determines
Total Design team (The Sixties) Collection Graphic Design Museum / © NAGO
■ the structure
■ of the ■ archivable ■ content ■ even ■ in its
■ very coming
Museum The semi-permanent exhibit 100 Years of Dutch Graphic Design contains a similar photograph from the same period, but this time of the design team of the first design office in the Netherlands, Tel Design.
■ into existence ■ and its ■ relationship ■ to the ■ to future ■ Jacques Derrida ■ Archive Fever ■ 1995 Tel Design team (The Sixties) Collection The Hague Municipality Archive / © NAGO
Categories: Museum | Graphic Design
For me, the concept of design is more than object-oriented; it encompasses the design of processes, systems and institutions as well. Increasingly, we need to think about designing the types of institutions we need to get things done in this rapidly accelerating world. John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation
THE GRAPHIC DESIGN MUSEUM AND THE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL BREDA PRESENT:
UPLOAD CINEMA
INTERNET VIDEOS ON THE BIGSCREEN 28 MARCH 8 pm
WHY?
WHAT??! Upload Cinema is a film club which brings the best internet films to the big screen.
Film is increasingly a question of collaboration and social activity; at the computer, at home or in the office. Upload Cinema brings the most interesting content from the web to the cinema: the space that was designed for
TYPO-FILM
SUBMIT A FILM
From Hollywood we have learned that a single picture can show a thousand words. But from reading literature, we know that a single word can show
Do you know any provocative, unusual or visually remarkable typographic films of today or the past? Send us your link!
THE STRENGTH OF TEXT AS MOVING IMAGE a thousand pictures.
25 UNTIL 29 MARCH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL BREDA
You will be notified if your entry is chosen. Guest curator is Mieke Gerritzen, director of the Graphic Design Museum Breda. Your films about the subject Typo-Film can be sent in March to:
WWW. UPLOAD CINEMA .NL
WWW.UPLOADCINEMA.NL
FILM AND IMAGE CULTURE ARE THE THEMES ON WHICH THE FESTIVAL CONCENTRATES. YOUTUBE, GAMING AND NEW MEDIA HAVE SPEEDED UP DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CINEMA.
And thus image culture is demanding an ever-larger place in the world of the film. The IFFB scouts the boundaries of cinema by directing its attention at both film and image culture. With a combination of innovating European productions, a large shorts programme, live cinema performances, a sculpture route, gaming and machinima, International Film Festival Breda offers its public the chance to search for what image culture means for them.
Upload Cinema has been created as a future scenario for the film industry. Draftfcb advertising agency is the main sponsor. Condor is the post-production partner. Bright and De Filmkrant are media partners. Curator and editor: Barbara de Wijn and Dagan Cohen (founders of Upload Cinema), with Erwin van der Zande (editorin-chief of Bright) and Dana Linssen (film critic for NRC Handelsblad and editor-in-chief of De Filmkrant). 11
8-bit pixel tie Playing Patience during office hours is sóóó 2008... Nintendo is again completely in. And why not appear dressed for success at your next meeting? Super Mario would be proud of you! Design for Thinkgek.com Available soon in the museum shop
COLUMN BY KOERT VAN MENSVOORT
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Drink your espresso Pantone 464 today! Design by PANTONE Museum shop price 49.95
Leave a note on your desktop Design Atypyk Museum shop price 5,95
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Why do you need the rest of your keyboard when doing administration? Design Sam Hecht Museum shop price 65,00
LaatSlow een OS? notitie Beachter fashionably op je buroblad. late! Design Ontwerp & Atypyk Design Museum Museumshop shop price prijs 65,00 5,95
Boomerang Metaphors IAt the start of the digital era, metaphors from everyday life were used in what was then the new computer environment in order to make otherwise incomprehensible technology acceptable. Terms such as the digital highway and desktop metaphors such as folders, buttons and wastepaper basket made the computer world accessible to almost everybody. By now, of course, the digital highway is accepted almost everywhere and we see how proven concepts from the digital field are gradually seeping into our physical environment. We call this phenomenon a
‘boomerang metaphor’. The icon watch and the pixel oven gloves are amusing, somewhat anecdotal illustrations of this. It is not unlikely that we will be confronted with more radical boomerang metaphors in the near future. Are the advanced ranking systems found in internet forums perhaps also applicable to the democratic voting process? Will the young players of SimCity turn out to be the urban developers of the future? Can I click on a new avatar at the plastic surgeon’s office? Will Second Life ultimately become First Life? In fact, there is really nothing new under the sun. When Edison first introduced his electric lamps, signs were hung in the room explaining that a lamp was not a candle and 13
that you should use the switch by the door to turn it on instead of lighting it with a match. Metaphors enable us to use familiar physical and social experiences to understand and accept unknown phenomena: a sort of lubricant for innovation. And before you know it, you are familiar with the horseless carriage and you simply drive around in a ‘car’. Koert van Mensvoort is designer, philosopher and editor-in-chief of www.nextnature.net
Hollywood Interfaces COLUMN BY ESTHER CLEVEN
Spielberg’s film Minority Report (2002) stars not only Tom Cruise and Samantha Morton, but also all sorts of technical devices. In addition to floating multitouchscreens which now appear in every crime drama, what I remember most are the interactive advertising signs: as you pass them, they recognise you and offer made-to-measure advertising (including moving images and sound, by the way). Just imagine, databases filled with information about your moral and consumption behaviour and then a complete system which communicates with you based on that information or even intervenes in your life. Fortunately, it is only a film. Data collections about the behaviour of individuals and interactive media are not a future fantasy. A hundred years ago, so not so very long ago as time goes, nobody would ever have dreamed of it. At that time, not much thought was given to the individual on the other side of the media. And the media were seen as static carriers of messages from senders to a diffuse and more or less passive group of receivers. But now, customisation and interaction is the motto, even in communications. For this, countless amounts of data are collected and media are developed into instruments with which you actively form a relationship and from which you choose your information yourself.
We were not able, as so often happens, to achieve all these proposals. But the interactive elements in the exhibition were executed so well that they have since been considered worthy of a prize: last year, Lust received a Dutch Design Award for best interactive design for this exhibit. The design includes, for example, sensors which ensure that light and projections along the wall react to the movement of the visitors, an interactivity that increases the farther one progresses. In addition there are a large number of interactive tables with touch-screens which are, for many visitors, the highlight of the exhibition. Accessing information is a physical experience which feels very natural. In the tables which, in the last room, contain the interviews, the possibility for choosing for yourself is pushed to the limit in an exceptional way. You can watch them as you wish, because the video material is represented as a pile of cards, each of which you can select and enlarge at will. It is not the linear content which determines the form, but the associative manner in which the user can best process the information.■ ________________________________________________
During the preparations for the semi-permanent exhibition 100 Years of Dutch Graphic Design we decided to include these changes in the exhibition, as a story that runs through it in the background. These changes in media and communication have fundamentally changed the face and the function of graphic design. Design agency Lust suggested making the information carriers in the exhibition interactive for this and to allow the level of interaction to increase during the course of the exhibition, thus Esther Cleven is curator of the exhibition as time progresses. In addition they conceived a visitor tracking 100 Years of Dutch Graphic Design system; visitors can use this to compare their route and prefer________________________________________________ ences with those of other visitors.
MULTI-TOUCH TECHNOLOGY In the exhibition 100 Years of Dutch Graphic Design, the Graphic Design Museum introduces interactive touch-screen tables à la Minority Report, the film in which Tom Cruise accesses, enlarges and processes information with his hand. In the museum you can watch interviews with and work by graphic designers in this way.
MULTI-TOUCH TECHNOLOGY In the exhibition 100 Yearsof Dutch Graphic Design, the Graphic Design Museum introduces interactive touch-screen tables à la Minority Report, the film in which Tom Cruise accesses, enlarges and processes information with his hand. In the museum you can watch interviews with and work by graphic designers in this way.
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100 Years of Dutch Graphic Design PERMANENT EXHIBITION
The heart of the museum is the exhibition 100 Years of Dutch Graphic Design. The visitor is guided through the enormous rooms past highlights of graphic design. A unique historical retrospective that clearly shows how Dutch graphic design is inextricably linked with the modernisation of society in the twentieth century. INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVES At the start of the twentieth century and in the years between the two great wars, individual artists, architects and typographers begin to exercise graphic design as a profession. As they develop, they form networks and organise themselves in professional associations. These graphic designers avant la lettre develop typography, posters and printed material that keep pace with the introduction of new printing techniques, the emerging mass production and the growing cities. The rapid changes that are adopted by both designers and clients stimulate a variety of approaches and working methods. SHAPING DUTCH SOCIETY The reconstruction and subsequent flourishing of Dutch society following the Second World War takes place thanks to combined efforts by both politics, trade and industry. The economic and social revival brings greater elan to the design world of the period (becoming more professional, working in teams, growing in selfawareness). In the decade following 1945, the design profession
played an important role in the reconstruction of the Netherlands and in creating a national ‘we’ feeling. The contribution of graphic designers is particularly visible in the field of media and advertising. Their work radically changes the face of Dutch society; communicating information in a clear and creative manner becomes the essence of the profession. The increase in prosperity, political freedom and the on-going emergence of the media accelerates the rate at which visual communication reaches maturity. GRAPHIC DESIGN IN PROCESS The period from around 1980 placed the emphasis on the practice of design. Theme and chronology are discarded here. A review is given of how graphic design functions in a period in which commerce and media have become equals to the traditional political and cultural institutions. Thanks to interactive interfaces, access to the information is an amazing experience. Globalisation, pervasive mass media, governments that are becoming reticent and business that increasingly operates on an international market – today’s society is complex and rich with contradictions. Dutch graphic design is characterised by a high level of individuality and out-of-the-box creativity which remains, however, strongly rooted in tradition. The computer becomes an essential instrument in the creative process and facilitates both collaboration with specialists from other disciplines and experiments with different media ■
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YELLOWPAGES
Now & Then Project 1 Logo
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These professional journals are for Beeke and many other designers, SUMMARY
â– How do you give tradition a future? â– How do you support an aura of authority without being authoritarian? â– How do you make government accessible without being gimmicky? â– How do you let a government express ambition in design without losing credibility? â– How do you serve the content from a project that is directed at design?
These questions have played a large role in the design of the new logo and the ‘nationwide’ house style On 21 December 2007, the national government started what is probably the largest house style operation ever held in the Netherlands: Project 1 Logo. More than 175 organisations that fall under the national government will, between 2008 and 2011, get the same logo and the same house style. The existing house styles of the ministries and departments such as Public Works and P.O. Box 51 will disappear. One year after the presentation of the logo designed by Studio Dumber, the ďŹ rst expressions of the new visual style were made for the national government. In a small exhibition, the Graphic Design Museum shows how the logo and house style came into being, the most recent applications of them and a ďŹ lm produced by the Government Information OfďŹ ce entitled One logo and style for the National Government. â–
On this table there are several piles of authoritative magazines about graphic design and visual communication.
â– Design: Anthon Beeke â– Production: Studio Anthon Beeke â– Realisation: Bruns, Bergeijk
an important source of acquiring knowledge about each other’s work and they form as it were a living archive of the most important developments in the profession throughout the years.The sides of the table carry stamps with names - from 1910 to 2000, with ten per decade - of Dutch graphic designers who, in the view of Anthon Beeke, have made a signiďŹ cant contribution to the history of graphic design in the Netherlands and have thus left their impression on the profession. â–
Wind, Change, Time Capsule: Conditional Design The research undertaken by Luna Maurer, Jonathan Puckey, Roel Wouters and Edo Paulus for their exhibition in the Graphic Design Museum in the autumn of 2009. ‘We get together each Tuesday evening and sit at the kitchen table. Everybody has their own place. We realise that we
enjoy this regularity.The basis for our meetings is our mutual interests and the search for what we want to make. Our work cannot be pigeon-holed: it moves between (graphic) design, art, typography, performance, film and sound. We use all media, but have a clear and explicit vision. We have elaborated this vision and ultimately arrived at the term “conditional design�. What we mean by that is that it seems more interesting to us to show processes instead of “finished� images. In a world where everything fluctuates and where technology generates enormous speed and complexity, we must, as designers, anticipate things. We want to design
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conditions within which processes can take place. These can be existing processes that become visible or new processes that we trigger by specific conditions.
‘We want to visualise time’
What we like about these evenings is that very small things can provide the impulse for larger projects. It is an exercise in translating a concept into something. For the Graphic Design Museum, we do not want to make a graphic design exhibition where you look at books and posters which were made for a different context. The projects on show will deal with processes that take place from now until the end of the exhibition. According to the second sentence in our manifesto (“The most important aspects of a process are time, relationship and changeâ€?), the theme will be constant change, instability; we want to visualise time, time that passes and becomes tangible. Our installation in the museum will not be stable. We want wind to blow in the room. As visitor, you will also feel the wind.We will have the wind generated by fans which allow all the projectors and projection surfaces to be in constant motion and to “hang aroundâ€?. If there is no fixed form, there is also no fixed place’.â–
YELLOWPAGES
Facilities Museum Shop
Café Sandberg
HISTORY
WILLEM SANDBERG The café is named after Willem Sandberg, graphic designer and former director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Museum shops are sometimes more popular than the museums themselves. The Graphic Design Shop offers a beautiful collection of design products that have been specially selected and produced for the Graphic Design Museum.
From inexpensive graphic design gadgets to the chic design dishes by Hella Jongerius. You can both start and finish your visit to the museum in the shop. The public can also enter the shop without having to buy an entrance ticket. We update the design products in the shop every month. We are constantly on the look out for new items. So, if you come across something, let us know. If your tip pays off, you will receive a special gift.
■ ■ ■ ■
NICE GIFTS FUNNY GADGETS ENTRANCE WITHOUT TICKET MONTHLY UPDATE PRODUCTS
Kids Design Corner MAMA, I DESIGNED A HOUSE STYLE Children always get bored in a café, so a special Kids Design Corner has been created specially for them.
■ Take a seat on one of the Dutch design classics and order a cappuccino. ■ The Sandberg Café is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm for coffee, sandwiches, salads and wine. ■ And now the museum café also serves coffee to go!
WiFi Hot Spot The museum café has free internet for people who bring a laptop with them. Everybody is welcome and for just one coffee you can enjoy wireless internet for the whole day .
Museumlab
The Graphic Design Shop is currently developing a webshop. At the moment it is, unfortunately, not possible to have ordered books delivered. You can, of course, always reserve a book.
MUSEUM LAB SESSIONS The Graphic Design Museum is starting a series of lectures aimed at spreading internal and external knowledge. These will be held in collaboration with various art academies. The aim of this series to offer established and starting designers a platform for discussion, lectures and interactive presentations.
The Graphic Design Shop can be entered via the Graphic Design Museum, but also has its own entrance on the Boschstraat. This makes it attractive to visit the shop even if you are not visiting the museum.
I AM THEREFORE I SHOP
MORE INFORMATION? For general shop information you can telephone 076 529 9939 during museum opening times or send a mail to infographicdesignmuseum@breda.nl.
❤ 0765299900
The Museum Lab is the knowledge heart of the Graphic Design Museum and is situated above the museum shop. The museum lab is a dynamic place for research into and knowledge about the broad field of image culture. The visitor has free entry to the multimedia library, where contemporary and historical material can be consulted in the research files and
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a digital database. The museum will, in the coming years, play an important role in the development of an influential and highly significant definition of the term ‘image culture’.The room is also suitable for organising workshops, undertaking research and for producing work assignments.
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Young Audience Go Ahead and Publish it!
New children’s expo to work as designers. Every child that visits the museum receives an assignment folder with tips and tricks, which helps them when designing.
The Graphic Design Museum has a special room for children in the ages of 8 to 14: Go ahead and publish! CHILDREN DISCOVER EXACTLY WHAT GRAPHIC DESIGN IS. WHY ARE OBJECTS AROUND US DESIGNED? WHAT CAN LETTERS AND COLOURS TELL US? WHY IS A CARTON OF MILK BLUE AND NOT PURPLE? WHAT DO THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF LETTERS ON A FILM POSTER SAY? Publishing is the core of graphic design. There can be no graphic designer without public and without medium. In the museum, children publish things themselves and get
Children’s parties ✶THE GRAPHIC DESIGN MUSEUM ✶ ✶ORGANISES PARTIES FOR CHILDREN✶ ✶ON APPOINTMENT✶ ✶ THE CHILDREN START IN THE CAFÉ✶ ✶ WITH PIE OR MUFFINS✶ There is an exciting work folder for each child, and they all go to the museum in the company of an education assistant and set to work as a group in the special children’s room: Go ahead and publish! The children spend at least two hours working hard as real designers. The young party-goers can also enjoy lemonade, eat ‘poffertjes’ or pancakes and design a large birthday card in the Kids Design Corner in the museum café.
School holidays Various activities are organised during the school holidays. For example, workshops, theatre shows and exciting treasure hunts for the whole family. In April we will announce the programme for the May holidays on www.graphicdesignmuseum.com
How does it work? Children are welcomed in the room and receive a short introduction and the assignment folder from an education assistant. Then the children set to work. In the room, their work is published on the wall and on life-size billboards. Children can choose the font, colours, pictograms and shapes for their design. Prefer to publish digitally? Yes, fine! One wall is set aside for projections. Children can take their place behind a computer, choose shapes, colours and letters from an image bank, make a design and publish it on internet. The assignment folder, full of surprises, can, of course, be taken home! VISIT?
The exhibition can be visited by the class on appointment, but individual children are also welcome: there is an assistant present in the room.
The new children’s exhibition will open in the middle of October. This exhibition will be produced in collaboration with the design studio Strange Attractors, a young international office that has a particularly headstrong way of dealing with typography, graphic design and new media. The exhibition will be about typography. Letters are not only something to write with, letters are also shapes. In this exhibition children discover - naturally by doing things themselves - what typograph is and how it works.
april 25 to may 5 mayholidays Kidsweeks Graphic Design Museum Brandt Los Brandt Los is a newly-founded association aimed at bringing together students and designers in the graphics profession. It arose from an initiative of a number of young pups, established graphic designers, art academy AKV/St. Joost and the Graphic Design Museum; this organisation is planning to organise a couple of meetings each year on a social and often active basis. In addition, there is an online forum where interested people can give their opinion about subjects related to graphic art. For more information and the programme, go to
www.brandtlos.nl
Colophon Editor-in-chief Mieke Gerritzen | Design Hendrik-Jan Grievink | Design assistance Sylvia Klop, Silke Oude Griep | Editorial desk Carola Drontmann, Fran van den Bogaert | Text editing Laura van Campenhout | English translation Jonathan Ellis | The following people worked on this edition Fabiënne van Beek, Roel Boonen, Ingrid Brok, Esther Cleven, Martin van Dijke, Hans van Heeswijk Architecten, Colin Huizing, Karin van der Heiden, Geert Lovink, Luna Maurer, Koert van Mensvoort en Marieke van Oudheusden Photography Peter Cuypers (P3, 14-15), Luuk Kramer (P15, 17, 18), Wies Peels (P16-17) , Tim Eshuis (16) | Architect Hans van Heeswijk architecten | Print Corelio Printing | Address Boschstraat 22 4811 GH Breda
YELLOWPAGES
Get Connected! Business Club Graphic Design Museum By Martin van Dijke
The Business Club of the Graphic Design Museum is made up of a network of innovative, creative business people. ★★★ A PLACE WHERE BUSINESS ACQUAINTANCES CAN MEET AND FORM A COLLABORATION IN A RELAXED WAY. A SPECIAL CHARACTERISTIC IS THE INNOVATIVE AND MODERN SETTING FOR THE MEETINGS. ★★★ MAIN AIMS
➊ Generating more funds for the museum and for special programming; ➋ Stimulating collaborations with partners; ➌ Involving and maintaining an active network of partners/sponsors at the museum.
Association of Friends
The Graphic Design Museum is a museum about messages. Graphic designers show how you can communicate using colours, symbols, signs etc. For example in a direct or indirect, a noticeable or subtle, a terrifying or hopeful way. And communicating is something that good business people enjoy doing, both with their clients, suppliers and personnel and with their business colleagues. Perhaps that is why these business people are members of the Business Club of this contemporary and dynamic museum for visual communication ■
THE GRAPHIC DESIGN MUSEUM HAS AN ACTIVE ASSOCIATION OF FRIENDS WITH AROUND 400 MEMBERS. The Friends are actively involved in activities that take place in the museum. By becoming a member, you support the educative aims of the museum! The museum naturally likes to do something for this in return: Friends enjoy free entry to the museum, are personally invited to new exhibitions and lectures, can participate in excursions, attend the New Year’s reception of the museum, and have access to the annual family day for friends and guests ■
BECOMEContact A MEMBER?
BECOME A FRIEND? Send an e-mail to
Fran van den Bogaert 076-529 99 09 f.van.den.bogaert@breda.nl
YOU CAN ALSO RECEIVE THIS COMPLETELY NEW MAGAZINE AT HOME. LET US KNOW VIA
WWW.GRAPHICDESIGNMUSEUM.COM/MAGAZINE Partners
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Rineke van der Hoeven rinekevdhoeven@casema.nl
IT IS TEMPTING TO BELIEVE THAT CONTENT, AND NOT FORM, DETERMINES OUR LIVES GEERT LOVINK
Opening Times Tuesday to friday 10.00 am to 5 pm Saturday & sunday 11.00 am to 6 pm The museum is closed on Monday. It is possible to open the museum on Monday for hall rental and for groups of more than 100 people; such groups should apply at least one month in advance.
Entry prices
Adults € 7,50 Children under three free Education / students / De Nieuwe Veste course participants / holders Breda pass / BNO members € 3,75 Museum Year Card valid 65+pass not valid All prices are per person
Graphic Design Museum Boschstraat 22, 4811 GH BREDA info@graphicdesignmuseum.com T +31 (0)76 529 99 00 F +31 (0)76 529 99 29