Ways of thinking © Design steffen maas

ways of thinking wim crouwel graphic designer professor museum director

in his own words

WCr lauwen books

lauwen books Working firmly within the Modernist tradition, Wim Crouwel (1928) had a profound influence on the postwar development of graphic design in the Netherlands.

Crouwel and Total Design, the studio he cofounded in 1963, helped define graphic design by focusing on the design process worked out in a team, rather than highlighting the selfexpression of the designer as an individual, applied artist. Corporate design professionalized and helped shape the face of modernity in the Netherlands. Crouwel headed the avantgarde of these developments: as a lecturer and intellectual (rare qualities in a designer), but first and foremost as an instigator; an ambassador for the designers community, a critic of his environment and a guiding teacher.

waysofthinking.nl

wim crouwel

in his own words

1974

a proposition for education in letterforms and handwriting

1974

problems with house-styles

1985

lower case and single alphabettype in the dutch low lands

1991

ethics and economic style

1993

1928: beauty and transparency, logic and ingenuity

1996

since the new alphabet

2004

the aesthetic utopia as the aesthetic of the utopia

2006

right from the beginning

1974 we have to create rules for a new design method

‘a proposition for education in letterforms and handwriting’ visible language vol. viii #3 (1974). pp 261-266

a proposition for education in letterforms and handwriting Education should provide the means to find a personal form of expression through letterforms; it should not be restricted to an esthablished system for copying existing styles. A new starting point for creating letterforms (as well as for design in general) – based on a system of regular pattern in the widest sense – would create a system allowing the greatest freedom and flexibility. Utility and selfexpression are equally important in teaching a child to writeand, at the same time, to recognize patterns and the basic rules of form and shape.

When talking about ‘education in letterforms’ we cannot separate this activity from other activities in the field of creative education. In my view, education means helping a human being to find a personal form of expression through letterforms. It does not mean learning how to copy existing types. If today we find ourselves in somewhat a situation regarding education in letterforms, it only means that we have discovered how nonsensical it is to follow any of the numerous ‘how-to-do-it’ systems. We are no longer sure which method or which direction is best. It is as if the environment has become polluted with type, written shapes, and with printed letterforms. No clear line can be perceived.

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A critical point has been reached in many fields of education. For example in the field of art education: from the moment when everything was possible in art, problems arose. These problems occur in almost every art school; the possibilities are endless, and teaching is no longer accepted in the old manner (that stands for ‘the man who knows teaches the one who does not know’). It is no longer possible to talk about ‘beauty’ or ‘ugliness’ or about ‘good taste’ or ‘bad taste’ in absolute terms. ‘Aesthetic’ has become a term which can be interpreted in many different ways.

Any shape for a utility-object is as good as any other shape, as long as it serves a certain aim. The result is that there is no longer any basic standard to which we can refer, either for shape in general, or more specific for letterforms.

But let me concentrate on letterforms. Today we are still willing to accept that certain historic typefaces are perfect examples, mainly because these types were in accord with the time of their creation, and perfectly expressed that time. But what typeface today expresses our time? Is it the so-called computer type with strange dots and thicknesses here and there? Or is it the neutral easy-to-read sanserif? Is it the standarized functional forms of handwriting fabricated with those ballpoint pens which are forced into the child’s fingers?

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Our present strangely unrealistic computer-type is only a fashionable short-term trendsetter that has nothing to do with computers. Sanserif receives another finishing touch every five or ten years according to fashion, and today’s handwriting is the most deadly system for any touch of personality.

The only way out of this critical stage in designing and teaching is, in my view, a cellular approach to the problems.

This means thinking along the lines of cellular patterns as a basic structure for design in general. Regular patterns (in the widest sense) allow the greatest freedom of forms and shapes, and at the same time bring a specific point of view which runs like a red line through every form that results from this way of conceiving design.

Let crystallography serve as an excellent, guiding example from nature!

This is a new starting-point for all two- and threedimensional design problems – for letterforms as well as for industrial design. We have to create rules for a new design method; to work in accordance with these rules will lead to results which will fit into a new invisible system. This will not force us into uniformity but will allow the greatest degree of freedom and flexibility. At the same time, letterforms will evolve away from their existing forms, and it will almost cease to be possible to make faithful copies of historical typefaces.*

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We really need a new way of thinking to release ourselves from the mess we are making of the problem. * See for example what the Digiset, the Linotron or any other CRT machine which works along the lines of regular patterns, is making of historical types. Take a close look through a magnifying glass; because the pattern is so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye, we accept those ill-shaped results!

We no longer have to teach finished letterforms, but instead we have to teach the rules of regular patterns; we have to open up the fantastic world of pattern systems. This is the grammar to serve a language of our new forms and shapes. It is not a ‘new’ way of thinking; the sign systems of the Middle Ages, as well as the earlier nineteenthcentury Hokusai handbooks for the textile trade, are older examples of the same principle.

How can this direction of thinking, which is so well suited to the design of printed letterforms, be worked out to encourage a more personal form of handwriting? In principle, each style of handwriting fits into a basic pattern; almost every teaching method for handwriting starts with a determined pattern, and from the strict limitations of this basis, one has later to develop a personal style. I think we have to invert this system. First we need to find the basic pattern which is strictly personal for each individual, so as to explore the existing creativity of the child next; perso-

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nality in handwriting style can then start much earlier and will develop far more harmoniously. Different teaching systems exist today; systems that use single-, double-, triple- or more lines along which to write; systems that start off beginners with a flexible pen, a flat pen, or a pencil; systems that use pre-printed examples, which start with the single letter, or start with certain letter combinations; or the most advanced system, which start with the drawing. But all these systems have one thing in common: the result is to be more or less the same script for everybody so as to provide a consistent communication tool. This utility purpose is primary; self-expression is always secondary.

In my opinion both purposes are equally important; neither should be given preference- certainly not in this era of typewriters, dictaphones and other tools, which serve the same purposes of communication just as well, or even better. Instead of trying to teach every child to write in the same style (with the underlying belief that this will later change automatically into a more personal style), we should help the child the rules of the game and develop the natural feeling for the basic patterns. For this we have to discover the basic patterns from a study of the child’s uncontrolled scribling in his pre-writing period, and these will provide basic directions towards his natural feeling for

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rhythm. Rhythmic scribling exercises could serve to uncover natural basic patterns.

The most important element in this pattern is the angle, or the different angles, or movements; other elements are widths and heights which can only be defined at a later stage. Having defined the principal pattern elements of each individual child, the actual teaching of writing can begin. The complete regular pattern can be used to form the beginning, without fear of disturbing free muscle reflexes.

For these earliest writing exercises, we should not teach basic symbols of the alphabet in a specific traditional form, but only basic form-characteristics. These formcharacteristics should be shown in such a way that the child can interpret them in his own way. A moving picture could serve this purpose, or a series of slides could show the symbol in different existing forms. The idea is not to show a specific ‘a’ but to show the characteristics of the symbol ‘a’ etc. Some of the basic patterns may, at first, look rather different from the ones we use today in teaching handwriting – especially if we take into account right- and left-handed patterns. This general approach to handwriting will be much freer and entail fewer frustations.

Its advantages will be greater sensitivity in recognizing patterns. And greater sensitivity towards the basic rules of form and shape.

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1974 a corporate design program cannot create an image, it is the translation of an existing image ‘problems with house-styles’ proceedings of the 6th biennale of graphic design, brno (1974). pp 150-158

problems with house-styles During the past ten years it was high time for corporate identity programs. In fact it started all around 1960; more and more companies, institutions and groups of people discovered the power of design. It became highly fashionable to have a decent trade mark, an efficient type style and an original color scheme. Very obscure enterprises suddenly became visible and gave a perfect ‘show-off’; but what did they show exactly? Still the same inferior products, but better packed and better presented.

Most of the corporate identity programs were styling exercises on a short-term basis. It was a real fashion and it was design overtime.

It was in 1963 that we started with a group of my colleagues our own studio ‘Total Design’. The name we chose was the ultimate expression of our ideas about the possibilities of design; a total thinking in corporate design, the total design! The dream was to be, as a designer, able to fulfill the complete range of design necessities. This meant: designing the product, designing the presentation of the product, designing the company environment, the vehicles, the interior and everything. In our opinion there were only few good examples that were up to standard: the corporate identities of Olivetti, IBM and Braun and

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some airline companies. We mainly learned, during the eleven years of our existence, that the creation of a real corporate program is very complicated. It is not complicated design-wise, but the biggest problems involve the role of design in general.

What should be called design activities; what is the influence of marketing; where starts publicity; who makes decisions; which responsibilities do we have etc?

A corporate identity program should be a real translation of the image of a subject (a company, an institution or a group of people) in fact telling, in simple symbols and words, what the subject is and what the subject does; making people aware of the subject as it really is! If we examine (with these criteria in mind) existing corporate identity programs, in most cases we shall see there is nothing more than a trade mark, a letterhead, some typography and a color scheme, these items functioning more or less as an aesthetical faรงade. The real problems are mostly left unsolved. Of course, there is a differentiation in the problem. For instance, there are companies that produce and sell products, there are holding companies, trading companies and service companies. Each of those examples have their specific characteristic features. Possibly the problems for a design program to serve a holding company are the biggest to

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overcome. There are only very few holding groups that have an honest design program; it is almost an impossibility. The structure of a holding company is often so complicated that a corporate design never tells the truth.

Let us take an example, quite a normal example in the western world. A holding company represents a group of companies that are active in various fields; some are manufacturing plants, some service companies, some trading companies, all work under the same parent company. What face should the parent company have?

An independant neutral face? And how to show what the holding is all about? Should any of the affiliated companies show that is a child of the same parent company, just like the other companies? The affiliated companies may have opposite interests in the market; some may even produce goods that need a product image; some may even produce goods and sell them to another company within the same holding. When a designer is called in to solve problems like these, he may not be able to do it without asking critical questions. Sometimes this means a sharp confrontation between designers and managers. Very often, research is done by the designer which makes clear that certain aspects cannot be visualized honestly without criticising the company at the same time. That is why most of the so called corporate design programs are nothing else then a

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house-style program; a styling of the surface of a company; just some new clothes for the same old ‘bastard’ to look pretty, but watch out!

Very often the designer is asked to design a company image just for publicity reasons. In this case one cannot speak of a corporate design program but of an genuine advertising program. There is a big difference involved.

So called house-styles for publicity are, in general, short-run affairs and create a non-existant image. This is the design of ‘wishfull thinking’ to make people believe.

It is advertising and a job for advertising designers.

A corporate design program cannot create an image, it is the translation of an existing image. If this image is not worth showing, don’t design anything! As you may understand, in my opinion there is a difference between design for a general design program and design for advertising.

An information designer can hardly act in the other field; in advertising. They are two specializations, each with a lot of specific knowledge. The way of thinking of an information designer differs significantly from that of the advertising designer. The information designer has developed good genes for structure and organisation, he aims to create a certain order, to make things clear.

He does not need to be original, he must clarify.

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The advertising designer – on the other hand – has a feeling for atmosphere and the psychology of the general public. He works mainly to create convincing circumstances. He must be original and trend-conscious.

In my opinion there are some differences as you may see.

In reality of course, some designers are clever in both fields, but theoretically the fields are clearly differerent.

So a general corporate design program is the job for the information designer. He can also design general trade marks, sign systems, pictograms and general typography.

A ‘styling’ program, in the way I look at it, is the job for an advertising designer. He also designs packaging, product images, product trade marks and advertisements. Most design offices have both faculties combined: this means some designers work in the field of information-, others in advertising design.

Complicated corporate programs must be carried out in sections and must be clearly divided into a general information part and a product- and advertising part; the clearer the boundary, the better it serves both client and public.

The design program should also be flexible, I mean anyone who has to work with it must be enabled to find his own way within the program. A well structured and open-end program will be the answer to both points I have mentioned in my prelimenary statement for this symposium.

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Firstly, the criticism that such a design program brings a kind of uniformity which is always unrealistic and never a translation of the real situation where people work together. The answer is that instead of the strong typographic rules and graphic regulations that appeared in programs of some years ago, now there some system of guidelines should be used; information on how to play the game individually within a certain framework and with a strong emphasis on quality. The design should serve the structure and should not mainly be based upon aesthetic rules.

Secondly, the criticism that for many companies a corporate program is not flexible enough to serve the market situation. The answer is that a good program that is well structured will make clear, as I said before, the difference between the image- and information design, and the design for the market. An open-end design program that is not closed off, but opens up to further development, will prevent uniformity and a sterile approach; so the product image does not have to suffer from the basic program.

Now I will make some brief remarks on the issue of trade marks. Together with the development of corporate identity programs, more and more trade marks have been designed. More and more publications on trade marks have

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appeared. Especially the abstract symbol, the Japaneseinfluenced geometric direction, is remarkably well represented. More so: to my knowledge the market is flooded with them and completely saturated. To design an identification sign, that can be distinguished from the others and will not dissappear in the masses, is not an easy job.

Firstly, there is the old stylized naturalistic symbol, such as the dog from ‘His Master’s Voice’. The fact is that it is almost impossible to find a general subject which covers a range of activities.

Secondly, there is the logotype, the specific typographic solution. In my opinion still the best solution in all circumstances. Today a name or even some letters, prove to be a stronger identification vehicle, than abstract symbols; the popularity of the latter have spoiled their reason to exist.

May I end my lecture by summing up my main points in two statements: 1 the time for abstract trade marks is over; the logotype proves to be the best image vehicle 2 corporate identity programs are true translations of the image of a subject for information purposes; they have nothing to do with advertising.

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1985 the utopian dream is over

‘lowercase and single-alphabet-type in the dutch lowlands’ octavo. a journal of typography #5 (1985). pp 6-13

lower case and single alphabet-type in the dutch low lands Thinking of the history of the lower case typography in my country names like Piet Zwart, Paul Schuitema, Gerard Kiljan, Willem Sandberg and Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman immediately spring to mind. But in which order should they appear in an article on their lower-case work? Who was most creative, who was first, who was most influential?

They all lived and worked in about the same era. With the exception of Sandberg, they all produced their best work during the twenties and thirties. Kiljan, Schuitema and Zwart were more or less trained in the field of the Arts and Crafts, while Werkman was a printer. Sandberg started in the thirties, but made his most influential work during the fourties and fifties. Being a typographic autodidact, he was a late starter in typography.

From September 1923 to November 1926, Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman published irregularly his paper The Next Call. In an edition of 40 to 50 copies he sent them to friends and interested people all over the world. Nine issues appeared in total. In return he received many avantgarde publications; he must haven been well informed about the international movement. The Next Call was a publication that was based on his own specific technique of printing and with many texts of himself, that reflected

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Werkman’s sensitive view on reality. It was published in Dutch and German and was a melancholic call for friendship and understanding. The German text on page 2 Streiten ist ziellos (fighting is senseless) reflects him losing his faith in the breakthrough of the international avantgarde. Especially in German texts – where every noun should be written with a capital – the use of lower case is a real statement for simplified typography. Therefore, it is quite logical, that the plea for the use of lower-case and single-alphabet-type started in Germany. Although Werkman was by no means a functionalist, it is quite remarkable that he used the Annonce Antique in many pieces of his work. The Annonce Antique is a type that was widely used by modern typographers in the Netherlands since 1925. It became a sort of symbolic alphabet for functionalism just as the resembling ‘Venus’ in Germany. In the beginning Werkman printed in his small workshop many experimental pieces with pure typographical material, but started in 1929 to work with the inkroller direct on paper, followed by a technique that used cut-out paper shapes. In 1929 Werkman, who also worked as a journalist, published in Blad voor de Kunst (Journal for the Arts) a review of the poem Bezette Stad (Occupied City) by the Flemish author Paul van Ostaijen. Like Apollinaire and Malarmé, Van Ostaijen gave much attention to the

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typographic form of his poems and called it rhythmic typography.

Piet Zwart, originally a designer in the Arts and Crafts tradition, changed his attitude towards design around the end of World War I, when he met the painter Vilmos Huszár and architect Jan Wils. Zwart started working in Wils office and designed the letterhead which was one of the first typographic designs he ever did. From 1921 to 1927 he worked at the office of the famous architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage. Like Werkman, Piet Zwart became influenced by the avantgarde of the time. He met Kurt Schwitters in 1923 in the house of Huszár and he met El Lissitsky in the same year. After an early start which shows a mixed influence of Dada and De Stijl, Zwart developed an emphasis on a clear, open and rhythmic order of typographic elements.

He creates a kind of visual activation, caused by a-symmetry, form contrasts and diagonals. Especially the work for the Nederlandse Kabelfabriek at Delft, of which a son in law of Hendrik Berlage was the director, demonstrates this break-through. In this new direction in his work, the first full lower-case typography appears. It was in 1924 that Zwart compiled the basic edition of the Normaliënboekje, a vademecum of electro-technical norms which also contained some advertisements for the

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Kabelfabriek. In 1926, in a supplement to this booklet, the first full lower case adds are published. It is however not before 1930 that Piet Zwart used lower-case more consequently throughout his work. One could state that he first created an expression of a new hierarchical visual order which was later developed into the visual expression of a fundamental anti- hierarchical order.

From 1929 onwards Piet Zwart designed a large series of works for the Dutch post and telegraph office and in these examples he presented some of his most spiritual and far reaching lower-case solutions. This portfolio could be interpreted almost as a statement against authority. An invitation card for a PTT* congres – for instance – caused much trouble, since the Ministry of Transport did not want to be invited in lower case. The card had to be reprinted, and now Piet Zwart designed the text in capitals. ‘Nobody gave any comment then’, he said. * PTT Posterijen, Telegrafie en Telefonie; PTT abbreviated for post, telegraph and telephone was a state owned company until 1986.

With his clear statements, both written and by means of his designs, Piet Zwart was surely the most influential designer of his time in the Netherlands. Even today, many young designers feel inspired by his meaningful typography.

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Paul Schuitema and Gerard Kiljan, although their work is much in the same direction (the three; Zwart, Schuitema and Kiljan were also good friends), never became as internationally well known as Piet Zwart. In the Netherlands however the three are regarded as the most important representatives of the new typography. Schuitema’s work is more direct, less poetic and less complicated than that of Zwart. In the Netherlands Schuitema became well known for his Van Berkel portfolio which he did in the second half of the twenties. It seems as if lower case typography was too elegant to his taste. Whereas Piet Zwart was the intellectual type, Paul Schuitema was a worker. His first lower-case typography appeared relatively late, around 1930, for example on the cover of the progressive literary magazine De Gemeenschap.

Gerard Kiljan – whose career was mainly dedicated to his work as a teacher – did his most well known work as a graphic- and industrial designer for the PTT. His lower-case examples are very illustrative of his straightforward, but at the same time, subtle approach. Kiljan appears a true follower of the Bauhaus principles of functionalism.

His work for the telephone service in 1932 for instance is a clear example of informative design.

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In 1929 Willem Sandberg published a lower-case brochure on visual statistics. It was his first work. Sandberg became a designer because he was interested in the discipline.

He worked in the beginning mainly for governmental institutions for which he mostly designed visual statistics for exhibitions. Throughout his activity as a designer, straight from the beginning, he mainly used lower-case typography. His strong belief in visual statistics as a means for understanding, his dislike for hierarchic structures, made him a dedicated lower-case typographer.

From 1937 onwards, when he became a curator of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, he designed most of the catalogues, posters and exhibitions for the museum. He continued to do so when he became director of the Stedelijk in 1945. After the second World War his output of posters and catalogues set a new standard for museumprint, that influenced the communications style of many museums all over the world. Just like he created a new approach in the museum of modern art, he created a free approach in typography in which capitals and punctuation marks became superfluous. Sometimes he preferred handwriting above typesetting. He used primary colours only and was not afraid of strange typefaces. He loved to use brown packaging paper for printing and tore his basic illustrations from silk paper.

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His texts were short and clear; language inspired his typography and sometimes turned it into visual poetry. He was intrigued by the inner shape of letterforms; these inner forms often played an important role in his typography! The typographic works he made for the museum was often compiled during meetings. Sandberg was always challenging authority and in that manner proved his enormous capabilities. He was a composer at heart, the results are always warm and human. After his retirement from the Stedelijk Museum, he became director of the Israel museum in Jerusalem and lectured everywhere. He left his lower-case marks in all corners of the world.

Let us go back to 1925 when Herbert Bayer made his design for a single-alphabet type and to the plea of Moholy Nagy for a basic type in 1926. To Kurt Schwitters’ phonetic single-alphabet type from 1927 and Jan Tschicholds’ singlealphabet type from 1929. All these attempts to replace the traditional alphabet by a single-alphabet type, occured in the same period when the use of lower case appeared.

Lower case was – more or less – the recognized replacement for the yet non-existant single alphabet; it could well be regarded as second best until a basic singlealphabet came into production.

In the Netherlands I do not know of any attempts com-

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parable to those done around 1925 in Germany. Much later, in 1938, Sjoerd de Roos designed the Libra and in 1939 the Simplex fonts for Lettergieterij Amsterdam.* * Typefoundry Amsterdam

These fonts were – to my opinion – rather late answers to the basic requests for a single-alphabet type. However: the designs of the Libra and Simplex alphabets had nothing in common with the spirit of the new movement. Instead they showed such a completely different mentality, that one cannot seriously consider them as options within this framework. They are fashionable results of someone who did not believe in the modern movement at all.

In 1967 – parallel to the production of the first generation electronic typesetting devices – I proposed a single-alphabet typeface as an answer to new functional needs. It was a rather theoretical proposal, since some of the characters did not have any resemblance with existing ones. It caused a great deal of attention. But the attempt failed in a period when functionalism – understood in the spirit of the Bauhaus – became denounced as anti-human and old fashioned.

How – in this respect – can we regard lower-case typography and single-alphabet type today? Is there still a real need for it? Or should any lower-case publication and single-alphabet attempts, immediately be regarded within

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the framework of post-modernist irony, unveiled as an aesthetical reconstruction of what others once discovered?

Except for this white elephant there is – at this moment – no designer whow uses lower-case more or less consequently. When it is done, it is as an exception. I am afraid therefore, that the utopian dream is over. That Sandberg was one of the last inspired believers in a better world by means of new forms of art and typography.

Lower-case was one of the fine possibilities to express an optimistic approach towards a better society.

More succesful was my proposal for a new, widely distributed example of lower-case typography: the Dutch telephone directory. It is clear that this could never have happened without the awareness within the Dutch Postal organisation of their own rich lower-case heritage. Piet Zwart, Paul Schuitema and Gerard Kiljan laid a solid foundation indeed. On the other hand, the use of lowercase in the directory is not even directly based upon this tradition.

The design is not primarily an expression of functionalism, but a mere result of limited capabilities of the then used computer. To be precise: I had the choice between punctuation marks and capitals. The number of possibilities in the computer-program to shift to capital, lower-case, full stop or comma, was rather limited. I chose to go for lower-case because it is more difficult to read an

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adress without proper punctuation marks, than one without capitals. By using four columns with vertical separation lines, a load of paper was saved. To uphoId clarity and legibility I narrowed the Univers slightly. In order to make a clear connection between name and telephone-number, the numbers were placed in front-, instead of the traditional position; behind the name. Typesize was the all important typographical criterium. In the first edition of the directory the letters were judged to small to be deciphered by the elderly or people with sight problems.

So, in the mean time, the original version of 1973 was replaced by a newer directory. Unfortunately also some other details, like the place of the telephone numbers, that had nothing to do with legibility, have been altered in this new edition. The four column system was replaced by the old three column system, and typeset in an unaltered version of Univers. The position of telephone numbers in front of the names, was replaced by the conventional system where the numbers are placed at the end of the column, connected with the name and adress by means of dotted lines. The Univers telephone-numbers are replaced by a more legible type, specifically designed by Gerard Unger to mix with the Univers text. But most remarkable!

The telecommunication services continued to use only lower-case.

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1991 the very societyconscious behavior of designers is a matter of time and circumstances

‘ethics and the economic cycle’ studium generale ‘ethics in industrial design’ akademie voor industriële vormgeving (aive) eindhoven. pp 14-17

ethics and the economic cycle How well I remember the beginning of the fifties and the early period of the GKf*, the Society of Applied Arts, as a unit in the larger Federation of Artists in the Netherlands. * Gebonden Kunstenfederatie

This federation was founded due to initiatives in the war period, during the German occupation. Moral and ethical visions were determinant in this federation: everything was measured within norms and values that had been formulated during the war. The message was: to become a member of one of the Societies of the federation, one should have been clean during the German occupation.

So, one should not have been a member of the so called cultural chamber, an association of artists founded by the occupant; nor should one have worked in commission of the Germans or for institutions of the occupying forces, and so on. Since the Society of Applied Arts was rather leftish in the political arena of that time, the liberal or conventional artist did not feel comfortable in it. It was an idealistic group which felt strongly that the arts should be employed for a better society. It did not want to return to pre-war conditions. And we had plenty of time to philosophize and moralize, due to the fact that there were not that many commissions to be had. Dutch social-union life was flourishing.

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A phenomenon that could of course not be avoided was the fact that – for instance in the field of graphic design – there were two professional societies, and a certain tendency to speak about each other in moral terms. Since the other society VRI* (Society for Advertising Designers and Illustrators) numbered one or two members which had designed posters for national-socialist organizations during the war, the whole club was defined ‘evil’. * Vereniging voor Reclame-ontwerpers en Illustratoren

The result, that a large number of designers, who did not feel at ease in the political climate of the federation, was left alone, was no point of discussion. Things were – in the aftermath of World War two, either black or white. Ethi- cal questions seemed to be translated into moral questions and we always came up with the proper logical answer.

Of course there were differences between the two societies, but most could be related to those basic opposite points of view. In that respect: the federation member always took up a critical position towards every commission. This attitude resulted in a certain unfriendly climate towards the client. Unless the opposite was proven, clients were principally wrong, because they aimed first of all at profit, instead of ideological results. In the other society one was more realistic, and the aims of an enterprising client were not immediately regarded as suspect.

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Because of their independent points of view, the designers of the federation produced a more advanced and abstract type of work, whereas in the other society the more factual designers and realistic illustrators felt at home. The federation designer lived in a higher atmosphere, far above the everyday business: while the other designer stood well with his feet on the ground. The federation designer was of course also more expensive!

The result of these profound differences of opinion was, that at the art schools in the Netherlands, where one was trained to become a designer, strange things happened.

This was mainly due because many federation designers – in their commitment to society – became teachers (I also think that a lack of commissions prompted them to the schools). One was foremost trained as a critical free-lance human being, and not for instance for a job in an advertising agency. Honestly, advertising was not to be done! That belonged to the much detested a-cultural capitalistic system.

Well. To conclude: the war left a long and deep scar also in the world of design.

Fortunately, during the sixties, the two professional societies that I was speaking about, could be merged into one larger society: the Dutch Graphic Design Society GVN*. * Grafisch Vormgevers Nederland

This was mainly due to the chairman of the federation of

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Applied Artists Jurriaan Schrofer who, with unabated force, aimed at a merger. At that time some federation members gave up their membership; a very regrettable misunderstanding.

The thinking, in terms of good and wrong, was also manifest in the old Institute of Industrial Design IIV* in this country, which faded away in 1976. This institute had members among both designers and manufacturers. The designers were mainly members of the KIO** , the Circle of Industrial Designers. In this IIV a true battle of direction took place between the more principled members and the more pliable ones. * Instituut voor IndustriĂŤle Vormgeving or IIV ** Kring IndustriĂŤle Ontwerpers or KIO

For a short period, even a second society of industrial designers existed, next to the KIO. And of course they were related to the already mentioned federation. Purity in style, honesty and originality, were keywords that played an important role: imitation was out of the question. In practice this was leading to a deep difference of opinion between designers and manufacturers. Again: basic to this discussion was the designers inclination towards improvement of society. As always the designers were more skilled for this than the manufacturers. The writer on industrial design: Simon Mari Pruys was party ideologist,

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and many of the discussions were instigated by him. In the end The Ministry of Economic Affairs, one of the main stakeholders in the Institute of Industrial Design, became fed up and withdrew it’s financial support. There we were: back to square one!

What is it that designers in the country have, which does not effect most of the designers in other countries? Is that missionary force a result of a general need of the Dutch to win souls? Or is it that designers pre-eminently are the guardian angels of our consciences? One can consequently ask the question: does one become a designer because of the critical constitution, and is it because of the lack if such a constitution that others become manufacturers or something like that? It does not convince me: this is not what determines such differences.

The borderline between a more or less conscious behaviour run through all layers of society, and it is sheer accidental where a designer or a manufacturer is to be found.

The motivation to become a designer is surely not to be looked for in this direction. Most likely the very society-conscious behaviour of designers is a matter of time and circumstances. It may be that the Dutch have a little extra, but otherwise it is part of a trend.

For look what can be seen in this period: in what we call

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the postmodern era. A pre-eminently eclectic time, where the notion of originality has a completely different meaning than during the discussions in the Artists Federation and the Institute of Industrial Design. Today the making of new combinations from existing examples is a much practiced way of designing things. We borrow and cite in architecture, graphic and product design from all times in the past; these days it is even bon ton and reflects a great knowledge and erudition. How does all this fit into the scheme of ethics?

I remember well – as if it happened yesterday – the serious discussions during the fifties regarding a Braakman-chair from PasToe in bent plywood.* * Cees Braakman was chief designer at UMS PasToe; a producer of design furniture in Holland.

It resembled in a certain way a plywood chair of Charles Eames. This very Dutch chair would – by today’s standards – never have been noted as a case of plagiarism. The same occurred – a few years later – with a metal legged chair of Wim Rietveld for Gispen. Again it resembled a model by Eames and was banished by the designers of that time. It would never lose a plagiarism case today.

Did the meaning of ethics change that much? In a certain way we must come to the conclusion that this is the case; the notion of ethics changes in time and circumstances.

This is by all means not an original conclusion; we know it

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already for a long time, but each time we rediscover it again.

Today, in this period of the post-modern thinking, designers are less restricted in their thoughts and ideas than in the fifties and before. There is much more freedom.

This shows in a much more business-like behaviour. We come to the conclusion that as a designer – one is an entrepreneur among others. As a designer one does not oppose a manufacturer, but is one of them. Nowadays it seems also that the ideas about ethics are less restricted.

In other words, could we eventually put the question: does a more business-like behaviour, as a result of an up-going economic development, encompass automatically a downfall of ethics?

Or: are eclecticism and economical high-tide always to be each other’s brother? Difficult questions and I shall not be able to answer them fully. With our questions we are – as it were – stuck between the ideas of successive periods: 1 the period of classicism with a general accepted design-scheme that offered restricted freedom.

2 a middle-class period of eclecticism with a capitalistic moral; a left winged moralizing period with very utopian ideas on design.

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3 and the present liberal, unlimited period, that tends to become very superficial.

During classicism, the first period one should, as a designer stick to basic schemes. Freedom within these schemes was relatively small. Designing with a certain standard of the determining orders was not regarded as plagiarism, but seen as a token of great professionalism.

The middle-class capitalistic phase showed us that profit asks for flexibility of the designer. He was a professional in the widest sense and in the widest field. There was no specific need for a design-ethic, but the first writings on that subject did show up. William Morris and others marked the beginning of a coming change.

In the period that I characterized as left-wing moralization – let’s say the period between 1918 and 1968 – there was an accurate supervision on the well-defined left /right morale, with the result of a good deal of intolerance.

And now after the democratization of the sixties and seventies, every grip – given by foregoing periods – seems to get lost. Hardly any notion of an idea exists. We fled into aesthetics – eclectic aesthetics that have replaced ethics.

To what standard do we measure our daily practice. The present pragmatism does not have the power to cover all the ethic questions of today. We no longer get any further with our well proven professional idea of ethics about such

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things as originality, honesty in the use of material and pedagogical aims. In a short time the problem-area became immensely large; not in the least under the stress of ecological problems. The modern commission poses a complexity of problems and they are often opposing each other.

As simple as the answer may be upon a problem of originality, as difficult is the answer to a problem whereby function, manufacturing, material and ecological effects come together. Such a commission delivers a knot of problems which cannot be disentangled. A designer – on his own – is usually not well equipped to find a way to a solution; teamwork may eventually do the trick.

To conclude in short, in a high economical period we note a very easy way of handling aesthetic questions at one hand. While on the other hand we see a permanent complexity of ethic questions which confront a conscientious designer. Unfortunately, this situation does not pro-vide a balance. Some designers may think that superficial aesthetics deliver an answer. More likely it resembles the act of the famous ostrich. Ethics cannot simply be changed for aesthetics. It seems that the time whereby our work was based upon a utopian model is forever lost.

Nobody believes any more that a better world could be shaped by aesthetic design. Design became strictly a matter of convenience; how do we make our tools, objects

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and buildings friendly to mankind, easy to use and in such a way that they look good. Compared to the once high expectations; a rather profane picture of a profession. But that does not mean that ethical questions could be ignored.

If that would be the case, we surely end up in so-called professionalism of the gunman.

Especially in areas with a high population density – such as here in Western Europe – the surface of the earth is in danger of strangulation by human interference. Every bundle of grass is disappearing and superdense civilization structures will replace nature. Next to an intensive ecological pollution – already in progress – also an alarming visual pollution is threatening us. Visual pollution – just as every other form of pollution – is the result of human interference.

But more than the other general problems, it seems that visual pollution is again a question of aesthetics, just outmoded aesthetics. So it looks as if we still need aesthetics to solve our problems. Is that right? Or is the tool, which was once used for an utopian dream, no longer usable for a battle against madness?

For those of us who drive a car, highways have walls on both sides. Every now and then we are allowed to look through a gap onto the chaotic network of houses, factories and other buildings, as far as reaches the eye. No natural green is to be discovered. And the monotony of the

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casing through which we drive, reduces our brain activity almost to zero. We feel embarrassed to drive in a car.

A society that allows such a development to happen, is ethically (and in many other ways) in great trouble!

I am afraid that many see the brain products of planning of architects like Ricardo Bofill, as a solution for this type of situation. It is however a very superficial aesthetic visual grandeur designed by the force of financial profit, instead of ethical motivation. Should this be a remedy against the parasitic behaviour of man? A simple notion of ethics shows us the immoral side of such answers. Palace-like buildings that remind us of the classicism of the ‘Roy Soleil’, with the certainty that behind the pre-fabricated façades the human feeling is neutralized into a far from wealthy outlook.

The ethics that should lead us now are in principle still the same as the ones that led us into the utopias of the twenties. However, the tasks are more complex and complicated, and we are – strangely enough – absolutely no more realistic now. As I mentioned before, most of the time we have changed ethics into aesthetics, and we must come to the conclusion that this was rather simplistic translation of the idea. With aesthetics alone we shall never be able to reach below the surface. Still most archi-tects and designers believe highly in aesthetics; a

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strong new wave in the eighties proved this. With respect to our responsibility for society and for what we leave behind for posterity, this is very short sighted and even dangerous.

Therefore – in the framework of today’s subject – I feel inclined to question designers, architects and town planners, as the ones who are responsible for the visual world of tools, objects and environment, to forget their worn-out idea of aesthetics. If aesthetics still play a role, it should be aesthetics that distract themselves from the so-called ‘intelligent Spielerei’ with that rich history, aesthetics that become wasteful and extravagant. We have to look for a wider meaning in which all determining factors play an important role. Interpreted like this, aesthetics come closer to ethics and eventually melt together into something that we can understand and handle. We should develop ethical aesthetics in which elements such as simplicity, honesty, function and usability become a new meaning.

Is that a new utopian dream?

Although I did point out plagiarism, I did not touch the difficulty in this respect of the difference of vision that exists in various parts of the world. We will surely be confronted with this problem; firstly in the period after unification of European countries, followed by the growing framework of a worldwide internationalization. I cannot

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discuss this subject in this introduction today. But I am sure that only a new international law will be able to tackle this serious problem.

Most interesting is the question that was adressed to me by the organizers of this symposium about ethics and museum collections. I replied: ‘since I do not understand this question, I will not be able to answer it!’ Admitted; that reply may have been somewhat one dimensional. Maybe I should, in my capacity as an museum-employé, try to understand the question, however provoking as it seems to be.

So let me philosophy for a moment. The fact that museums collect and show products of industrial design is an act that underlines the importance of making the public understand the role of the designer. But also: by confronting the arts with selected mass-produced objects, we will possibly be able to narrow the gap that seems to exist between the arts and the public appreciation of design. It can show us similarities in approach and – at the same time – fundamental differences between art and design. By doing so we can clear up many questions and uncertainties. Also we could compare ethic questions: is there in this respect also a similarity between art and design? Even if we may not be able to give the answer immediately or fully the introduc-

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tion of industrial design in the museum collections will surely stimulate the discussions around this subject. As far as I can ascertain, moral and ethic questions on art and design are to be regarded as alike, to a rather high degree.

Originality and plagiarism: material and the making; the marketing morality; subject related questions and the influence of people; I would not know any difference. Just as we have to face the clash of opinions in an art-case like the Mapplethorpe photographs, we have to face such a clash with respect to the ‘yes – or no’ necessity of certain products. Let us hope that the ethical reflexions will never be spoiled by narrow minds.

To finalize. I would like to return to the questions that I formulated in the beginning of my introduction about ethics in relation to the economic cycles. Although I may have gone along a strange detour, I hope my answers came through. As long as aesthetics are given primacy and are replacing ethics, there occurs a great risk that such a situation and economic cycles will be inversely related to one other. Yet, as I said before, ethics are more than just aesthetics. Ethics will always play a determining role: may the economy rise or fall.

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1963 wim crouwel by jan versnel

1974 wim crouwel by anonimous

2009 wim crouwel by judith cahen

1964 wim crouwel in morgan by steve raviez

1974 wim crouwel by koen van velzen

2006 wim crouwel by vivianne sassen for fantastic man

1986 wim crouwel by paul huf

1979 wim crouwel by sjaak ramakers

1986 wim crouwel by paul huf

1996 wim crouwel by ronald sweering

1969 wim crouwel by paul huf for avenue jewelry and costume by alice edeling

1993 we are in a highspirited period where all the changes are accelerating graphic design activity ‘1928: beauty and transparency, logic and ingenuity’ preface to the catalogue. museum boijmans van beuningen, rotterdam (1993)

1928: beauty and transparency, logic and ingenuity In 1993, when I retired from the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, where I had been director for 8 years, I made an exhibition on the modernist period. I took the year of my birth and selected the most specific objects of that year.

Bugatti made his most competitive car ever and the silver Hindenburg sailed around the world. This was the world I always saw before me. in 1928 the Bauhaus had moved to Dessau where Gropius built that lucid glass school building (and the exemplary Meisterhäuser) · the first chromed steel furniture was introduced by Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe · Paul Renner created the constructive Futura typeface · Le Corbusier designed his most interesting architecture and his famous steel furniture (in cooperation with Charlotte Perriand) · in Holland the revolutionary Van Nelle factory and the Zonnestraal sanatorium were built This social movement (modernism) with its uncompromising clarity, lucidity, logic and ingenuity – even if it was sometimes unrealistic utopian – was an experience I dreamt about. It gave a basic direction to my aspirations.

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modernism in typography and graphic design I learned my profession during the letterpress era, managed in the sixties to overcome the transition to offset printing and was struggling to feel myself at ease with mouse and screen when they appeared. But since one is never too old to learn, I make use of the opportunity to explain some of my personal and critical remarks on the development of our discipline. I also would like to see whether the basic principles in typography and graphic design, which were highly decisive in my career, are still valid. To find out I will travel up and down between the past and today.

I would like to make clear that if I talk about graphic design and typography, I talk about that relatively small part of the profession in which advanced and critical thinking is involved. I do not mean the massive load of print that everyday sweeps over our world.

modernism; its spirit My generation grew up in the spirit of modernism. We studied at art school at the end of the forties, the period that the Second World War had just ended. It was a time of rebuilding the shatters of five devastating years. There was a great belief in a new future – and – just like during the aftermath of the First World War, architects and designers

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thought they could help to create a better world. Although our means and tools found their origins in the twenties and thirties, at schools like the Bauhaus, we cleansed them from all expressionistic touches and used them in a much more rational way: undo everything that was superfluous.

In my days graphic design was in all aspects seen as a cleansing job which should not tell its own story. For us the fifties were most promising: there were not that many clients, but we felt indispensable anyway!

today’s developments Today this all seems a far away past. If I look at the results of current design practice – even that relatively small part where advanced thinking seems involved – it is with great curiosity. These feelings are absolutely related to all the changes in society; design is always highly influenced by these changes. Design has, in general, always been a mirror-image of society. It is clear that modern society is complex and even within this complexity a constant change exists. It is obvious that graphic design is following all these changes, for better or worse. ‘Complexity’ is a key-word which fits the current situation of graphic design perfectly. It is my impression that graphic designers today love this complexity and try hard to express it, in their work.

Never before we have experienced so much multi-layered

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work; be it in a single image, a magazine, in a book or in digital format. One piece of graphic design often has different meanings, a book design hides many messages.

Messages are multi-interpretable. I observe these trends with much curiosity. They began some decades ago.

postmodernism Ever since the miracles of post-modernist theory came over us, I often fell into a state of great uncertainty. Postmodernism, at the end of the 20th century, is highly eclectic.

One of the first signs of uprising against the achievements of Modernism and simplicity was the publication of ‘Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture’ written by architects Venturi and Scott Brown in 1966. It was a kind of eclectic compendium of visual examples highlighting the quality of visual complexity and contradictions. In 1972 they published ‘Learning from Las Vegas’ in which they reflect on popular culture and commercial architecture and its influence on contemporary architecture and design. It also had much influence on disciplines outside architecture, such as graphic design.

In short, it re-introduced and worshipped eclecticism in architecture and design. Everything Modernism had brought us, which we assumed basic and of major importance to our

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work, was turned into ridicule. No more idealism, no more inspiring guidelines; to me it was just a sort of materialistic pragmatism based on historic examples and supported by a heavy load of theory. Post-Modernism as it was interpreted in architecture and design, gave us free pick and steal from all the cultural achievements of our past.

There exists a certain contradiction in terms in this way of thinking: looking backwards into history in order to make progress. Somewhat like looking down to get higher up. It was the beginning of a great lack of attention for moral questions, about what is ‘done or not done’. Even a return to traditional rules was a legitimate part of the game. As for traditional symmetrical typography and design, that had already long ago turned into hollow schemes without meaning, with unbreakable rules and regulations: it was simply re-invented as a recipe for many visual problems. In this respect, this recovery of tradition reminds me of a famous line by the writer Aldous Huxley: ‘Tradition is the best substitute for talent’.

But let me return to the current situation; the late-postmodern, or if you like, the past-post-modern era. One could say, apart from a temporary economic slow down, it is prime-time for graphic design. We live in a high-spirited period, where all changes are accelerating graphic design activity. Its alive and kicking. As I said before, designers

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accept the complexity, that comes with it, with open arms.

Wolfgang Weingart’s typographical de-constructions paved the way. David Carson’s ‘Ray Gun’ magazine, with its outstretched, lacerated and layering illustrations and text columns, was one of the ultimate examples. Even this week I received a brand new, Dutch published, magazine carrying the name ‘Currency’. Under the heading it explains: convey a state of being widely known/a container about survival/ a vast pocket/ an unlit place/ discarded private and public muck etcetera. For me it is difficult to find out, from the fragmented content and the secret formulas, what ‘Currency’ is about. But somewhere there must be an understanding audience for it. Obviously there is little desire to find solutions to unravel complexity; to provide individuals with a tool to obtain a clear view on the underlying structures and content. I must come to the conclusion that such views, as inspiring starting points for graphic design, are obviously no longer of primary interest.

Graphic design not only became the expression of an ever changing daily situation; it delivered the opportunity for change in itself. Tomorrows design must be different from that of today, in order to survive. As a consequence there is a greater need for ideas than for formal visions and structure. It seems there is no need for old rules and principles.

Is this bad? I do not know. But I am often suspicious about

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fast changing superficial fashions, small eclectic neo-styles, big atmospheric collage books: all that complex imagery. It all comes awfully close to life-style-styling. Style only has brought new combinations; it has never put forward great ideas. Once a certain Stewart Ewen said: ‘style is something to be used up. Part of its significance is, that it will lose its significance.’ And rightly so. I am sure that designers of this generation look different at their own work than I did. They don’t carry the burden of too much old philosophy (one cannot blame most designers of too much historical knowledge). They don’t have to struggle with principles of Modernism that have never crossed their mind.

Instead: they know the visual codes of modern life.

Crossing borders to other disciplines, so popular today, offer them a lot of new possibilities. All the tensions of today create a great challenge, there is so much going on; it is one great drugged dance party. Why should they bother? They have an open mind. And everything goes!

But; even helped by my strong belief in the future, I sometimes have the greatest problems in understanding their drive. What makes them click?

what was the purpose of our work?

As I said before, I think that graphic design is first of all a

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means to create a clear view in a complex and chaotic world. It should be a straightforward strong visual translation of messages and never an expression in it’s own right. It should show you the way. The message should never be buried under the form it receives from the designer. Creating order was our main objective. Just like architecture and other design disciplines, graphic design should deliver a social service, work for the public good. Those were the principles and that is where our main interest headed. That it didn’t always work out as we hoped, is a different chapter of the story.

Ever since the first signs of the 20th century modern movement appeared with constructivism, it was driven by an ideology which fostered a great believe in a better world.

In the realm of design this resulted in a search for work that served the community. During the second half of the century for example, interest grew in creating signage and symbols for international understanding. I remember when this subject appeared at the program of a conference of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations in 1963, a certain Mr. Bliss, who had developed the ultimate international graphic language, accused us – the designers – of not knowing his work. Under the title ‘Semantography’ or ‘Bliss-symbolics’ he created, as he wrote, a ‘logical

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writing for an illogical world’. During his life-long research, published in an extensive book, he invented all the necessary symbols for a visual language which assists easier understanding. Regrettably it was presented at a time during which designers were less interested in how things were done, but more interested in why things were done. The development of this conception of design also brought fascinating typographical statements and solutions. For instance the single use of lower case typography was not an aesthetic game, but resulted from a strong feeling for democratic equality. Caps belonged to an avoidable hierarchy. The rigid use of typographical grids and sans-serif type came from the need for structure, clarity and transparency. This was not a question of elegance, but of meaning. Graphic design was – so to speak – the choreography of what had to be said. And designers made the choreography come to life with great passion; it should be spiritual and contain tension. The great masters of Modernism such as: Jan Tschichold, Herbert Bayer, Paul Renner, Piet Zwart, Moholy Nagy and others showed us how lucid the result could be and how sharp it reflected their time. In those days the word ‘avantgarde’ still possessed meaningful content.

the art scene Today this all seems so irrelevant. As I said before, there is obviously a great need for artful complexity and redundant

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extravaganza in design. Even new-Helvetica-minimalism contains a double message. Sometimes I come to the conclusion that designers like acting much more than thinking. Typical for that situation is the turbulent inclination towards the experiment. Since the seventies the art schools in my country, have stressed the importance of personal freedom and experiment. And often the experiment for the sake of the experiment. The development of an independent point of view was of prime importance.

Rules or principles were not accepted anymore. Learning the inns and outs of the discipline came second.

Of course this mentality brought a welcome and refreshing interruption after the deterioration of Modernism, when designers were repeating old models that did not function any more. A counter-movement was much needed.

The attitude of critical self-research, and the lucky fact that many cultural institutions were receptive for new ideas, made Dutch graphic design in the eighties and nineties internationally famous. But gradually the experiment became, in my observation, synonym for lust in form and self-expression through this form. In that sense design became more and more part of the visual artsscene. Typographical pages posed as precious pieces of art, creating curiosity instead of making a text readable. With

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Bruce Mau and Irma Boom books grew thicker and heavier, and ever more colorful. But these books are about books: l’art pour l’art. Like in the arts world, authenticity became a mark of quality. The tendency to equalize art and design grew. I myself think (although they live in each others neighbourhood) graphic design and typography are quite different from art. There is a question of respon-sibility in relation to the public and ourselves involved.

the macintosh The peak of these wild developments came with the Apple Macintosh. This wonder-machine tremendously helped to open up new and wide perspectives. It brought the possibility to work in many complex layers at the same time. Software as the great miracle: ‘copy’ and ‘enter’ became the magic combination. Suddenly graphic design could look like stills from a video production. The computer is of course a blessing. Computerized typography for instance, can be much better than ever before. It gives a much better way of fine-tuning than could be done with the traditional techniques and it is more consistent. As a device to make things visible in a very short time it is indispensable; we have always had more dreams then could be realized by ourselves. Our productivity gained enormously. And as I said before: the computer created

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possibilities that we could not even dream off.

But sometimes I long for a computer of a less slavish nature. An intelligent computer with a screen that tells you to re-think whenever you forget that graphic design is something else than playing around with elegant nice results. Desk Top Publishing is not graphic design! Maybe, after all, creating ideas by means of pencil and paper was not that bad at all!!

new alphabet I myself was so intrigued and blinded by the first computerized typesetting in the sixties, that I thought it wise to create a specific typeface for it. A typeface that, much better than the old faces, fitted this new technique.

Sometimes, while working on this project, I even thought: ‘through the computer, design finally has become democratic’. The great German artist Joseph Beuys once proclaimed that ‘in every human being, an artist resides’.

In this arising vision of de-professionalism, some people in the seventies even stated that professional design was an anti-human discipline. That it ran across the inner, fundamental human wish for creative self-expression: man is not after clarity and order. In my country there even existed, for a short period, a true rebellious movement against architects and designers. With this all happening,

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one could not imagine a greater diversion from the original ideals of Modernism.

concluding While looking at the (at first sight) flourishing situation we are in now, my critical observations remain alive. I am not pleading a return to the bare basic philosophy of the modern movement nor to its moral principles. That is 20th century past. Never look over your shoulders for a solution.

We are in a different world now. But I am left with questions about principles, content and underlying structures of graphic design. As I said, I sometimes doubt whether these questions are still valid today. I for myself cannot stop to believe that graphic design is first of all a means of making things clear. To me that is its first rule. Creating complexity, curiosity and asking questions are another domain. In my opinion the most important guide is always the question: why are we doing what we are doing? It is all about our responsibility towards society.

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1996 everything that is well proven in time is new

‘since the new alphabet’ speech delivered at a-typi congres, the hague, 24-28 oktober 1996

since the new alphabet It is a long time ago, my new alphabet: 1967 was the year of publication. In thirty years a lot has changed and is even difficult to recollect the motives why I ever designed it.

Looking back it seems ridiculous. Basically I experimen-ted with type and words already from 1955 onwards.

I was intrigued both by the structural experiments of the De Stijl movements and by the purifying direction of the later Bauhaus in Dessau. In the sixties I became highly interested in visual structuralism, something that was in the air.

To me it resulted from working along typographic grids and trying to find the ultimate consequences of structuralism. Learning from architecture, I imagined a book or publication as a 3 dimensional product, where each position stood in a specific relation to any other position. A book is not a sum of single pages or double spreads, but a threedimensional object. For a lecture I prepared in that period, I made special slides visualising my point of view; some of those I still keep as some sort of nostalgic token. Even type can be looked upon as a 3 dimensional object. All this occured to me, with a vague notion of the bit-sphere in computers; I really didn’t know too much about it.

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In 1966, at the DRUPA* in Düsseldorf, the annual exhibition on print and paper, I attended the launch of ‘Digisett’, the first electronic typesetter by Hell. * Fachmesse für Druck und Papier.

Observing the results of this machine, and thinking about the way type was reproduced here, I became highly intrigued by this bit-technique. Typefaces drawn by hand and engraved in metal; then casted in an alloy of lead and softened by the many times it was used, had a very specific character and flavour. And here we saw a reproduction of that process, via the electronic brain of this machine, build up in little dots within a rigid grid.

It used more or less the principle of the old Jacquard textile machines, where each pattern is translated in a square grid and punched in a band of cardboard for reproduction. I saw the resemblance with the typefaces my grandmother embroided in little crosstiches on her embroidery canvas. From Kurt Weidemann I saw around this time his beautiful collection of 19th century textcanvasses. All in all I became very interested in all sorts of modular techniques to reproduce typefaces, such as through bricklaying and through tiles. I made many slides for my collection. It all fitted in my fascination for the cellular world; for that visual structuralism. Also an early book on the subject of computer typesetting, published in

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1966, made me aware of the many difficulties that still had to be overcome.

Typefaces, reproduced by the Hell Digiset tried to look like century-old faces, but failed to do that, as regards to those specific characteristics I mentioned before. If you studied the digital products through the magnifying glass, something odd could be seen. Small sizes, compared to bigger sizes, seemed all different; especially round shapes changed into completely different silhouettes. Only straight lines kept their form. The whole complex of visual contradictions, and the conflict between old conventions and new techniques, convinced me that possibly a time had arrived for different way of thinking. Possibly even a new typeface-system. This is how I arrived at my experiments. First all sorts of trials and experiments. After some time the offer to publish the results in the ‘Quarterprints’ of Pieter Brattinga.

I decided that my typeface had to be constructed from straight lines and 45 degrees corners. Following my interest in the 3-dimensionality of the book, all letters should have an even width, whereby spacing between words should always be related to the width of an individual character.

Caps are indicated by a line on top of the character and ‘double’ characters such as the ‘m’ or ‘w’ are formed by a line through the single ‘n’ and ‘v’. In this way a text not only

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has horizontal accentuation but also a regular vertical pattern. It is clear that it needs some training to read it! To me it was also clear that the typeface was not fit for use, but that it was designed for the sake of discussion.

Furthermore, I gave an example of integration of type and illustration. Digital thinking included this, in my opinion; we should do away with separate blocks for text and illustration. I was convinced – from the beginning – that my experiments could never tear down the barriers of conventions that guarded over the existing typeface tradition. One cannot simply bend an age-old development.

Still, I thought: it must be possible to start a sensible discussion on how to face the new, and revolutionary, electronic developments.

Well of course the discussion was short and not very effective. Nevertheless I got my chance to make my point, and today, thirty years later, I still receive letters and requests regarding this experiment. The ‘New Alphabet’ was mostly misunderstood as a face to be read by the machine, like the OCR-B* on cheques. * The OCR-B is a set of monospace font developed in 1968 by Adrian Frutiger for Monotype by following the European Computer Manufacturer’s Association standard. Its function was to facilitate the optical character recognition operations by electronic devices.

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Most critics who reviewed ‘New Alphabet’ never saw my explanatory text accompanying the publication, and interpreted it from what they saw. Nevertheless, I do not blame them, because that is the risk of every visual experiment. In retrospect it was a fascinating period which directed my work for a certain period afterwards. From there on I did for instance: posters with typefaces of similar nature; a symbol for Rotterdam; the logotype for Expo ’70, the World’s Fair in Osaka; a typeface for a series of museum catalogues; a typeface for an Olivettitypewriter (that never came on the market); a soft alphabet on request of Claes Oldenburg. And finally a poststamp for the Dutch Postal Services. I collected all these results for an exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in 1978, accompanied by a catalogue-leaflet that was almost unreadable since I tried to integrate text and illustrations.

This was 1967. From that point in time a real revolution took place. Now type is a hype! Never before such an eruption of typeface-creativity has been seen. And all resulting from that magical digital thing, that miniaturizes by the day, and can be handled by almost everyone.

The clicking mouse is running over his foampad. Before computer typesetting came into existence, one could count the international league of typedesigners at the fingers of two hands. Today, alone in Netherlands, the same number flourishes.

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Strange is the fact that, while during the fifties and sixties much research was dedicated to the readability of type and typography, nowadays we don’t hear anything about such research anymore. Also in this conference* nothing is heard about readability research. It is obviously outmoded! * A-Typi The Hague, 24-28 Oktober 1996

In the early days we were constantly kept informed about the results of tests with eyemarkers on individuals and groups; on reading-tests and text-recognition. It looked like an ongoing soap about the preference of type with and without serifs. Names like Zachrisson, Ovink, Tinker, Spencer, Vartabedian, Foster and Wendt were familiar in typeface- and typography circles. Always there was that everlasting confusion between display- and booktype.

And, of course, there was always someone who took a point of view regarding the origin of type; was it writing or something else. Moving was the fight in words between the conservative Didotlovers and the modernist metrical promotors.

Well: the computer made the Didotpoints old fashioned.

But what about readability? Did we finally reach the conclusion that the results of research added nothing to the profession? Or have we been overwhelmed by the uncheckable flood of type, and things we do with them?

The production of print is increasing all the time.

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New machines for transmission of the printed word have been invented, as well as new machines for copying.

A new era came in which almost everything is copied, overcopied, and digitally relayed by way of satellites.

And upon arrival becomes copied again for fax-distribution.

The final result often resembles a reheated week-old portion of airplane food, to be eaten in a pouring rainshower. And nobody protests for we have no problem in reading it. We accomodated ourselves completely.

The need for readability research just faded away.

At the same time a large amount of new typefaces came over us. Many are based on classic types and classic conventions, but seldom they are better. Others are funcharacters from the pop-scene where the approach is much more free. Just as I saw in my dream in 1967, type and illustration have melted together in overall images. True enough: not based on the same principles, but nevertheless integrated.

The influence of the autonomous two dimensional art is clearly visible. Text is no longer in the first place to be read, but first of all adds to the experience of the message.

And the message is short-lived: it is there to zap-up, glance at it, and push away. Out of many images, one overall image is created by turning the pages of the magazines, switching the channels, or surfing the world wide web.

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It seems that the final thing is getting high and feeling richer.

Is it worthwhile designing new typefaces when they are used in this secondary way; where any given typeface would do? I do not know, but it looks like it is, given the keenness of the whole existing army of typefacedesigners.

Type- and typographic design are strange professions.

On one hand we find the so called serious boys and girls who smoothen traditional typefaces to such a degree that they hopefully become children of their time. What is seen as an upgrading process, unfortunately often ends in a degrading affair. But how they love the endless shaving of curves and lines of alphabet number 1001! Hermits and idealists who, through almost invisible work, try to defend and protect our cultural heritage. With high morale they follow the evolution of age-old conventions. Their typography is classical, tending to symmetry; to the quiet, well balanced page. Is this old stuff? Nothing new? What’s new really? Everything that is well proven in time: is new.

On the other hand there are the fashionable cultdrivers.

Nonconformists; cutting and glueing with the Mac. More in tune with popculture then tradition. They love the experiment with the past. Real children of the postmodernists. Products of the past are at hand to reshape,

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combine and mix for short lived print. Tradition is dull; only the look of tradition is brandnew! Moral questions are questionable. One uses what is available; and scanner and mouse to do mighty good jobs. Their alphabets cry, protest or drop tears. Such is life!

A world of differences, un-bridgeable. At best one tolerates each other in the knowledge that they are all products of this time. They all have their teachers and their heroes. And just like in the sixties there is that confusion and discussion on who is right and wrong. And who has the strongest arguments, forgetting that none of them has a strong position at all. In fact the discussion is a nondiscussion if we look at it in a realistic perspective. Both camps represent high-culture, narrow ends of a wide wavelength that contains 99% popular- rubbish- and grey non-typography. With all our efforts in this age of renewal and innovation: the bulk of the visible output reaches below zero.

This proves that we need each other, and that all the differences of opinion and culture are in fact linked tightly.

The situation looks like a rainbow, where red and violet are parameters, but at the same time, are closely related colors as well. Both sides of the wavelength are equally involved in modern developments, the computer is their ultimate tool: nobody can do without it. Either they use it

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discretely, finding the right shape of a new typeface or the proper balance on the typographical page. Or they use it extravagantly to process overwhelming imagery on magazine pages, with their ever-new typeface inventions.

The first group of users try not to show the use of the electronic tool, but they can’t help that modern type and typography are clearly different from that of the metal type period. But readability is still their first aim. The second group is fond of modern means, and love to show-off with it. They explore all the wonders of the screen and if possible all at the same time, in the same job. One must often conclude that their main concern is not reading.

This year I was heading a committee to review the Dutch art schools. One of our findings was that in graphic design by far the largest number of students was interested in visual imagery and only a small number was dedicated to type and typography for reading purpose.

This makes me wonder in what direction we are heading.

I don’t know the answer and I will not criticize any of the developments, because – even if you don’t understand the feeling or the drive of much of the work – I am intrigued, sometimes even impressed by what I see. Jealous I get when I see with what ease these illussionists are making their images, confident of the need to communicate in this way.

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One thing is clear however, the world of graphic designers, type designers and typographers is definitively devided into camps; in spheres of functions. The information side that cannot do without reading, and the side where the image takes command and reading is a by-product.

This development implicates to my opinion, the need for a whole new approach in teaching. In the Netherlands the art schools went through a kind of liberation period. The need to break through the dogma’s and methods of the Bauhaus-system, called for a new type of school where the personal – unhindered – creative development of the student became the centerpoint of attention. At the same time the various disciplines lost their clarity. The influence of autonomous art was to a great deal determining the direction the disciplines went into. One tried to do away with the traditional barriers between departements, although this never really became succesful. For students the result is often a vague notion of future possibilities and many chances of failure as young professionals. Also in art schools there exists a tendency towards overlap between the traditional disciplines. Graphic designers do 3-dimensional work, interior designers do industrial design and industrial designers go into site-design for internet.

More and more multi-disciplinary studios come into existence. It is my opinion that, in spite of the integration

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of disciplines, the training of designers should not pursue this tendency further. The results are now to be seen at Dutch art schools. A general training with only a slight tendency for some sort of specialisation is not the answer for the future profession.

I think it is time to make clearer decisions. The system needs a fresh, new direction of thinking.

Art schools started in the 17th century as schools for drawing. In the 19th century, under the influence of the South Kensington system, the applied arts entered the schools. The Arts and Crafts movement gave it a new impetus, until the Bauhaus brought us the general ‘Vorkurs’ and the specializations. We entered modern times with an idealistic view on society In the seventies we elevated the personal – unhindered – development of the student to the center of the curriculum, and liberated the system from dogma’s and a strong division between disciplines. Now, 25 years after these last principal changes, it seems time to renew the curriculum again. As I said: we need a fresh, new direction of thinking.

In my view there’s a need for a relatively short period of general input, followed by a flexible range of specializations, offered in a modular model. Within this range, the traditional discipline of type design, as well as the modern multi-media direction can be found. Such a flexible system

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is better suited to keep in touch with the revolutionary developments of today, where a whole new series of specializations form the basis for the new interdisciplinary direction of our profession.

Ladies and Gentlemen, an experiment in my younger years brought me the chance to elaborate on recent developments in our intriguing profession. It is impossible to speak about type, without touching typo-graphy and the whole field of related subjects. The most important thing is that we keep our wide range radar turning and prevent ourselves from narrow professional ideotism. Let me finish with the beginning of the introduction. Much to my surprise I discovered my New Alphabet in Blah Blah Blah*, be it somewhat improved for readability! * Blah Blah Blah is an entertainment magazine from Reading, England

Oh what a wonderful world.

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2004 the disappearance of utopias is a great loss for the current intellectual and artistically minded debate ‘design today: i have interpreted the aesthetic utopia as the aesthetic of the utopia.’ lecture delivered to a group of architects, delft (march 2004)

design today: i have interpreted the aesthetic utopia as the aesthetic of the utopia It is probably best to begin my introduction by recounting an experience I had a few months ago while attending a preview of the restoration of the main building of Zonnestraal, a well-known Dutch sanatorium in Hilversum. I must admit that I was deeply moved as I approached the grounds. The snow-white building rising from the landscape has pale-blue, wafer-thin window frames that seem to dissolve into the blue sky. In my opinion, this is the consummate aesthetic of the Modern Movement, with its utopian desire for a better world. With the help of engineer Wiebenga, the architect of this building, Jan Duiker, designed an image of hope and potential for patients at Zonnestraal, who were suffering from tuberculosis. This is not only an aesthetic utopia but also a heart-warming social utopia.

Strangely enough, this building was realized by an architect who was actually a dyed-in-the-wool functionalist.

A man who wanted to achieve a maximum result with the most economic use of materials, and someone you would not have expected to be a utopian dreamer... extremes are often closer to each other than we may think.

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core issue And now I reach a core issue of my subject. If a utopia, as often alleged, is a representation of an imagined situation worth aiming for – a sort of dream – then I cannot use realized projects like Zonnestraal, for example, to illustrate it. In other words, the aesthetic utopia can be described only by referring to unrealized works. This is a limitation that I prefer to sidestep, however... at least in part. Moreover, utopia bears a close kinship to terms such as ‘ideology’, ‘expectation’ and ‘prognostication’; it all depends on one’s personal interpretation. I am convinced that many idealistic dreams have been realized that are based on utopian lines of thought supported by high expectations. Indeed, the dreamer or idealist was often willing to grant a prophetic character to his or her creation. But when we look at these plans in retrospect, we see that most were not very realistic and that the designer’s objectives were not fulfilled.

Once more I turn my attention to Zonnestraal, the sanatorium erected by idealists like Jan van Zutphen, thanks to contributions from the Koperen Stelen Fonds (Copper Holders Fund) of the Diamond Workers Union at a time when tuberculosis was a dangerous public enemy.

Realizing that science had reached a point at which control of the disease was a virtual certainty within the next thirty

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years or so, Jan Duiker designed a building with an approximate life span of forty years and no more. From neither a medical nor an architectural perspective, therefore, was this a utopia. It was a reality. Even so, architecturally speaking it can still be considered a utopia.

In those days, a great deal of writing and contemplation – based on thoughts of utopia – was devoted to architecture that would provide people with freedom, that would offer the light, air and space so vital to a healthy mind in a healthy body.

proposition Having focused in my introduction on a single building complex that I find particularly fascinating, I would like to propose that the aesthetic utopia – perhaps better defined as ‘the aesthetic of the utopia’ – that deals with the image of a utopia is extremely trend-sensitive. It can always be slotted precisely into its moment of origin. In this sense, a utopia – by means of its image – is closely tied to the time at which it is formulated. This can be seen most directly in images of man’s attempts to conquer space, for example, attempts that sometimes assumed utopian dimensions.

Think of illustrations by Jules Verne, early twentieth-century films on the subject, Russia’s initial steps into the reality of space as Gagarin crawled out of his steel capsule. A

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succession of TV series in the spirit of Star Trek – and even televised images of the latest developments realized in the conquest of space, such as the Mars expeditions – all belong to a collection of images of developments with certain utopian characteristics, and all can be dated with accuracy. Keeping the notion of trend-sensitivity in mind, I want to review a number of examples.

First, however, I would like to touch on the previous history of the newer utopias, beginning with the Newton monument that Etienne Louis Boullée designed in 1784.

During this period of what has been called ‘the architecture of the revolution’, the aesthetic of geometric solids was pursued and, in the case of utopian models, to a heightened degree. In certain cases it was, without question, a megalomaniac utopia. I point out Boullée’s monument because it represents an aesthetic culmination of the elementary geometry that has always played a major role in architecture. The geometry that, as more often in architecture, would also play a major role in the Modern Movement.

ruskin and morris My next stop is the nineteenth century, the century of John Ruskin and William Morris. They were among the first to point to the social dimension of design. As a solution to

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degrading working conditions and to products they rejected as bad and ugly, not to mention machine-made, Ruskin envisioned a well-organized aristocratic community, whereas Morris had more of a communistic society in mind. Their visions had strong utopian features. On the basis of their observations, both were against the degeneracy of factory production, but Ruskin was more theoretically orientated towards a kind of Gothic Revival, whereas Morris, who drew some of his inspiration from the Middle Ages, was more pragmatically focused, putting the accent on handwork as a solution: on arts and crafts as the resource of choice. You might say that both believed in a restorative utopia – it’s this aesthetic that emerges in their work. Visible in Morris’s romantic, old, incunableinfluenced typography; in his textile and wallpaper designs; in his furniture – in everything he made – are traces of the upcoming Art Nouveau. The epitome of the single-minded utopian and yet, in his aesthetic expressions, a child of his time.

sant’elia From the early twentieth century, the period that spawned modernism, I want to highlight Italian architect Antonio Sant’Elia, an advocate of Italian Futurism. Futurism was more of an intellectual tradition than a concrete artistic

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programme. Published in 1914, his Futurist Architecture was an early manifesto of the historical avant-garde that argued for a renewal of architecture. Under the leadership of Marinetti, the futurists sang the praises of dynamic form and the machine, in which they saw salvation. In a now well-known statement from Marinetti’s first futurist manifesto, he writes that ‘a race car is more beautiful than the Nike of Samothrace’. I call attention to Sant’Elia because he, as an employee of the municipal engineering department of Milan, a man driven by grand ideas of a metropolitan utopia, made splendid architectural drawings of art buildings. Sant’Elia’s drawings are among the most beautiful in the utopian tradition. They are also products of their time; they have that heavy expressionist aspect that can also be seen in the architectural drawings of less utopia-minded contemporaries such as Erich Mendelsohn.

terragni It cannot be denied that the utopian body of ideas surrounding futurism also led to the warm reception of Italian fascism. Utopia and politics are often tightly interwoven. The aesthetic of this political ideology is expressed mainly through Gruppo 7, a rationalist movement best exemplified by architect Giuseppe Terragni. His idealist-geometric-modernist house of fascism, erected in

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Como in 1928, is a perfect illustration of this aesthetic.

deutsche werkbund The ideals that went into the establishment of, for example, the Deutsche Werkbund, a German association of artists and enlightened entrepreneurs (comparable to the Dutch Association of Craft and Industrial Art, or VANK) were based on nineteenth-century movements that emerged around Ruskin and Morris, although by now mechanized production was no longer seen as threatening. Rather than commenting on all the interesting discussions that took place within this German organization, I am limiting myself to one incident that proved to be rather determinant for future developments. The incident in question involves a discussion between Werkbund members Henry van de Velde and Hermann Muthesius, who attended a meeting of the association in Cologne in 1914, while a large Werkbund exhibition was being held there. During their argument – the now-legendary Typisierungs debate – Muthesius, German councillor for industry, proposed the development of prototypes that would serve as models for industrial designs and thus raise the level of industrial production.

Van de Velde, then director of the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts, was a vigorous opponent of this idea. He continued to defend the freedom of the

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designer-artist, whom he felt should not be forced to follow standard models. Both speakers gathered groups of members for support. The proposal was rejected. What’s interesting, however, is that several years later, a new director at Van de Velde’s school, in the person of Walter Gropius, transformed the institution into the now-famous Bauhaus, and, although he had supported Van de Velde in 1914 theoretically, Gropius put Muthesius’s ideas into practice.

bauhaus The Bauhaus wanted art, design and architecture to be used to elevate society. The school sought opportunities to collaborate with industry; among others, Russian constructivism and the Dutch movement De Stijl had a marked influence on the Bauhaus. The efforts of advanced artists, designers and architects contributed to an education with an intensely activistic character.

Even though Gropius was a man with both feet on the ground, it’s fair to call the ambitions of the Bauhaus ‘utopian’. The chance to realize new ideas was even greater after the institution relocated to Dessau in 1925 and built a new Gropius-designed school there. Above all else, the assertive context formed by the architecture created a coherent image aimed at improving society.

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The Bauhaus became highly influential. Even during the construction of the new school, Gropius’s ideas on architecture had a powerful impact on others. They influenced, for example, plans for the now-famous Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam. Kees van Leeuw, the director of Van Nelle at that time, visited Dessau and drew inspiration from his talks with Gropius. Although based on a wholly different social perspective, like Duiker’s Zonnestraal, the Van Nelle factory, designed by architects Brinkman and Van der Vlugt, was seen as one of the high points of the Nieuwe Bouwen (Dutch functionalism), with its focus on better and healthier working and living conditions. The ideals that led to this factory were expressed in the aesthetic of functionalist architectural principles.

constructivism Certain theoreticians saw utopia as a category of the aesthetic. Russian constructivism exemplifies this position in more than one way. Artists who were products of the Russian Revolution wanted to be seen as structural engineers. Constructivism is the expression of an aesthetic arrangement of technical principles and is tied to a social and political utopia. Ultimately, such ideas would lead to the theories and aesthetic values that underpinned functionalism, rationalism and new objectivity.

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de stijl Building on the ideas of De Stijl – a group founded by Van Doesburg and Mondrian and based on the belief in a future world of balance and purity, and in the spiritual sublimation of humankind – architects and designers searched for the best way to express these views. The work of Mondrian, in particular, is a portent of this new world, perhaps representing the very purest aesthetic of a utopia.

Mondrian’s theorization was so realistic that, in the quest to reach his ideal world, he cited specific phases. As the freest of all arts, painting should lead the way, followed by sculpture and architecture and then music, theatre and literature. In treading the path to an ideal situation, Mondrian himself got no further than the art of painting and the occasional spatial experiment for an interior.

back from utopia To review once more everything I wanted to mention here, I opened a book published relatively recently, Back from Utopia: The Challenge of the Modern Movement. Edited by Hubert-Jan Henket – the driving force behind the restoration of Zonnestraal – this compilation features essays by a considerable number of authors, texts containing statements of particular relevance to this

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enlightened period of modernization. I chose Back from Utopia because it addresses the body of ideas that emerged during the heyday of twentieth-century modernism, which, as I’m sure you must realize by now, has been of great inspiration to me. Modernism in architecture is drenched, as it were, in utopian ideals.

Without utopian vistas, modernism is inconceivable. In many of the early twentieth-century writings of architects and designers, utopian ideals play an important role.

Optimism and social progress once served as driving forces for many creative artists. Apparently, the promise of a better, fairer society was a solid source of inspiration.

The Modern Movement embraced social and aesthetic innovation and the use of the latest techniques, sweeping aside obsolete values of continuity and tradition for the sake of lending shape to the now and the new. More than anything else, building was meant to improve the living conditions of the masses; it was to promote freedom and emancipation and answer questions posed by the reality of the everyday. ‘Light, air, space and an economic use of materials’ were ‘leitmotifs’ for construction that would tackle, among other things, the unhygienic and unhealthy conditions found in urban slums. The difference between the monumental and the ordinary was to be eliminated, and the architect was seen, as in constructivism, as more

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of an engineer than an artist. An exalted new world-view inspired many.

weissenhofsiedlung In my eyes, housing projects designed by, among others, Oud, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Stam for the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart – a 1927 building exhibition organized by the Deutsche Werkbund – are perfect illustrations of this new world-view. The Weissenhofsiedlung was meant to be inspiring image of housing for the future.

typography Before continuing my reflections on three-dimensional utopian ideas and the accompanying images, I want to cite a two-dimensional example: typography. The Bauhaus, for instance, assigned an important role to typography. My focus is on the so-called ‘lower-case typography’, in which only small letters are used. Dutch designers like Paul Schuitema, Gerrit Kiljan, Piet Zwart and later Sandberg were important advocates of this style; as early as about 1924, printer-cum-artist Werkman, driven by utopianpolitical views, printed pamphlets using only lower-case letters. Lower-case typography has two sources: one is idealistic and the other functional-rational.

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In their writings, politically motivated idealists used lower-case letters with an eye to breaking through the traditional hierarchy and giving expression to the utopian ideal of equality. Small letters corresponded to the pursuit of a classless society. Even a man like museum director Willem Sandberg, himself a typographer, had fun comparing capital letters to gentlemen sporting top hats and small letters to ordinary guys wearing caps.

The Bauhaus was a proponent of the functional point of view, owing to traditional German spelling and its profusion of capital letters: words written only in lower-case letters saved time. For quite a while, a sentence at the bottom of Bauhaus stationery read: ‘wir schreiben alles klein, denn wir sparen damit zeit’.

Included within this framework were experiments aimed at the creation of an unambiguous, universal alphabet completely free of designations such as ‘uppercase’ and ‘lower-case’. Both Jan Tschichold and Herbert Bayer made designs for a universal alphabet. Serifs – short lines adorning the ends of classic letters – were also renounced as remnants of a traditional period. A plain sanserif letter was a better match for the functionalist vision of a future world. Keywords were ‘clarity’, ‘pragmatism’ and ‘directness’.

The arrival of lower-case typography in the 1920s was, therefore, an amalgam of political and functional idealism,

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both strongly utopian in character. Ultimately, it all led to an aesthetic view of typography, which continued to resurface from time to time – and still does today.

le corbusier The following examples of modernist utopias are deliberate choices that hold a particular and personal fascination for me. For this reason, it is impossible to skip the renowned architect Le Corbusier, mentioned earlier in connection with his housing project for the Weissenhofsiedlung and perhaps the greatest architect of the twentieth century.

Early in that century, he had already formulated theories on urban design and architecture, which were to have a strong impact on his contemporaries. In the context of our subject, I have selected just one of Le Corbusier’s utopian urban designs. I refer to the development of La Ville Radieuse, the radiant city, a plan he began in 1922 and worked on at intervals. The initial idea was a city for three million inhabitants.

A dream, imagined as a gigantic diorama; an ideal; an abstraction of, and a theory for, a city of the future.

The historical importance of this plan lies mainly in the unprecedented way in which it totally isolates the problems of urban design (and urban development) from practical reality and analyses them in an abstractly scientific way.

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The plan is for an open city that could have been realized using the resources available at that time. The various areas of the city occupy a geometric plan, which was thought to be the most rational choice. Streets as we know them are nonexistent; circulation is incorporated into the building blocks themselves. Le Corbusier mentions only ‘internal streets’. Traffic arteries, at a considerable height of 5 metres or so from the ground, run between blocks, and slower traffic occurs at ground level. Population density is about 400 inhabitants per hectare; nonetheless, about 85 per cent of the ground surface is reserved for gardens.

Every dwelling looks out on an immense park.

One result of the confrontation between practice and theory was Plan Voisin, Le Corbusier’s design for a section of Paris, which appeared in 1925 at the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, part of the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, an exhibition held in Paris.

peter van gogh In this context, I’m reminded of my 88-year-old friend, Peter van Gogh, who in the 1960s designed the Climatological City, which consists of one gigantic ring-shaped building with a diameter spanning at least several kilometres and a height somewhere between 100 to 150 metres. Transport and all other functions take place within

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the ring. The beautiful landscape inside the ring thrives thanks to the creation of a kind of sub-climate. Without a doubt, this is a city that could be built in the new polders of the Netherlands. Van Gogh is the classic example of someone who has made utopia his life’s fulfilment. He lives in a virtually empty house with only a few folding chairs and, on the wall, various images of the Climato-logical City.

Never, not for one moment, has he considered the notion of realization. The idea alone provides him with the strength to continue working on his plan.

buckminster fuller Another person who deserves to be mentioned here is the American Buckminster Fuller: the man behind the Dymaxion Theory and designs for geodesic domes large enough to cover cities like New York, controlling the environment within and thus creating a healthier climate.

Buckminster Fuller believed passionately in a makeable world. His globe-spanning planning proposal of 1963 testifies to an unshakable belief in humankind. High in the sky, an enormous sphere dotted with millions of lamps displays all data required to control the world and its problems. In the blink of an eye, via a computer network, current conditions affecting natural resources, migratory flows or food shortages, for example, would be visible.

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The best location would be in the vicinity of the United Nations Building, in the United States; from this hub, problems could be handled in an intelligent manner.

Remember – internet had not yet appeared on the scene. Buckminster Fuller liked the idea of the earth as a huge spaceship. Dutch readers are sure to know the work of this designer, as one of his geodesic domes was once part of the Aviodome, a former aircraft museum at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. The aesthetic of his concretized vision can be seen in these domes, many of which have been built; their form is so logical that they transcend descriptions such as ‘attractive’ or ‘ugly’. Wonderful presentations of Fuller’s utopian and half-realized or unbuilt ideas soon have observers believing in the logic and the alleged feasibility of these designs.

ron herron Not far removed from Buckminster Fuller’s body of ideas are designs by English architect Ron Herron: his Walking City of 1963, a city able to relocate to any conceivable spot on earth, consists of gigantic buildings on telescopic legs that can walk whenever and wherever they desire. It’s a kind of nomadic city whose residents not only move but take their dwellings with them. Herron’s superb models and drawings exhibit the aesthetic of a convincing

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technological utopia.

new babylon I have now reached the final relevant example: New Babylon by Constant Nieuwenhuis. Recently, this 1960s plan has enjoyed a great deal of renewed interest. The image is one of a highly flexible urban development for the new, playful, nomadic citizen, as envisioned during the turbulent and creative period associated with hippies and flower power. Constant put the aesthetic of his body of ideas into fascinating drawings and models that make clear that these are global plans not yet worked out in detail.

His artistic ideas are based on a utopian belief in new forms of society visible on the horizon.

conclusion Remarkably, apart from designs created for science-fiction purposes, new utopian plans such as these have not been seen since the 1960s. Twentieth-century examples were obviously nurtured by optimistic modernism. The belief in a makeable world has been undermined in the meantime.

It seems as if the human ability to fantasize can no longer be tempted to conjure up idealistic plans. Pausing to consider the philosophies that accompany such plans, the inspiring discussions they generate and the source they

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have been for so much innovation, I believe the disappearance of utopias is a great loss for the current intellectual and artistically minded debate.

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2006 do designers still think that their profession is important for the welfare of society?

‘right from the beginning’ essay written for the personal views series of conferences in porto (23 june 2006)

right from the beginning This is a story about becoming a designer. It is my own story but seen from the outside looking in. In order to remain at some distance towards my own career – and have a better overview, I will speak in the third person:

first the questions How should I sum up his life? Will I tell you about the sources, what influenced him, what made him a designer?

And what where the most important moments? With these questions floating around me, I write about early decisive moments, about these years that were most important to him.

groningen: in art school While working on a painting of a still life, his eyes now and than floated to the upper part of the classroom where some travel posters of Cassandre were pinned to the wall.

The ‘Etoile du Nord’, the ‘Normandie’, the ‘Statendam’.

He was much more interested in these fascinating images, than in his still life.

What a difference, these highly stylized visualizations of travel, compared to his own naturalistic watercolor. This clearness, this visualized dream of what traveling by boat or

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train could be, made him go to the town library to learn more about its creator. This was the first encounter with graphic design in its most imaginative form. Being a student in an old fashioned Arts and Crafts Academy with no outlined specializations, for him it was also the moment of an early awareness of a sense of direction.

In that manner, nosing and thumbing through the books, he learned more about the work of Cassandre, but he also discovered the masters of his own country such as Piet Zwart and Paul Schuitema and their constructivist typography. The meaning of text translated into typography.

Did you ever see Zwart’s book for the Dutch Kabelfabriek?

Typography integrated in photography! A whole new world opened before his eyes: much more fascinating that his daily art school exercises! This was a highly realistic world, compared to that of the romantic drawing, painting or sculpture he learned. And so, gradually, he discovered design. A designer, in his eyes, was someone who should always try to express the essence of a message. The message should inform, not persuade. Much later however he understood that this could lead to very different solutions. Many roads can bring you to Rome.

There was another unexpected discovery that influenced his sense of direction. The building that housed his art school was one of the earliest modernist creations in

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Dutch architecture. Designed in 1923, it was a straightforward structure of concrete, steel and large glass windows.

Only the entrance still betrayed faint reminders of the preceding expressionist period. In spite of the outmoded teaching method (that he loathed) he always felt at ease in this building. The no nonsense environment was more in accordance with the Cassandre posters, than the romantic subject matter they taught there.

amsterdam: into real life What could one do after having finished art school? In was 1949. At the time, only a few years after World War II had ended, not many jobs were available for someone with artistic aspirations. What could he do with his drawings and watercolors, his etchings and lithographs? He wasn’t longing for a life as an independent artist, neither he felt fit for it. All he was sure of, was an all encompassing feeling of uncertainty. At such moments one needs some unexpected luck the proverb says. But: did he have to sit down and wait for it?

Instead he decided to leave his small provincial town and move house to Amsterdam, speculating that if something was about to change, it would happen more quickly over there. Nothing was more untrue! In the beginning he experienced a miserable time with no hope

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at all. His art school portfolio didn’t open any doors. After a few weeks, he nearly decided to give up.

But finally, he overcame his shyness and phoned Dick Elffers, a wellknown designer whose work he knew. That could be his lucky break, Elffers invited him to his studio to see his work. What a fantastic afternoon it became, he knew Elffers’ posters but discovered that he did a lot of exhibition design as well. They talked about everything he was interested in, about what a designer could be and what design could mean to society.

And finally the elder designer promised to introduce him to the director of the exhibition company where most of Elffers spatial designs were realized. A few days later, much to his astonishment, he received a call and was hired immediately. From one day to the other (with no experience at all) he faced the challenge of being an exhibition designer. This jump into a black hole proved to be an important moment in his life. There it all began!

encounter with swiss design He was given his own jobs for small exhibition stands. The most decisive moment followed when the Enderberg company received a large commission from the Marshall Plan authority. Two large river barges had to be converted into a floating exhibition. To guide this commission the designers

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of the project, two Swiss designers and an Italian architect, came to Amsterdam. This was his first encounter with Swiss/Italian design and typography. What an experience it was, working a whole year on these advanced creations! It changed his life completely. Ever since that experience he knew in which direction he wanted to move; the direction of functional-, informative- and clear design-solutions, be it two- or threedimensional.

integration of disciplines Abstract art became a new phenomenon in the fifties; it intrigued him from the beginning and he became a founding member of an association of artists, architects and designers who believed in the integration of the various disciplines. The membership of of the GKf, the Society of Applied Artists was to influence on his work enormously. The federation strongly believed in cooperation and a healthy cross fertilization between disciplines in a manner comparable to the Bauhaus. The reason why Bauhaus became such an important factor in the development of art and design was because is was an example of multi-disciplary teaching.

the influence of architecture

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Right from the beginning his work was also much influenced by architecture, not directly but via the statements that architects delivered. I talked already about the building that housed his art school. But also the developments encouraged by the Sullivan statement ‘Form follows function’ and Mies van der Rohe’s ‘Less is more’ impressed him. These ways of thinking once created fascinating modernist answers for the problems faced by society. He strongly believed that graphic design in the twentieth century gained a lot from developments in other disciplines such as architecture. Typographers and type designers are – for instance – often prisoners of old rules and conventions. A fresh or even experimental vision becomes often blocked by history. Other disciplines often function as healthy eye openers.

on his own In 1954 he started on his own. Gradually he became able to make a living as an independent designer, having the great luck to be able to work – right from the beginning – for a small museum of modern art. A friend introduced him to the director of that museum*. As said before: one needs some luck every now and then. * the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven was led by director Edy de Wilde

He designed a steady flow of posters and catalogues.

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The early posters showed already a certain sense of abstraction. The focus on the subject was always through type. The title and inspiration by the work on show, led to a translation into a graphic construction.

Looking back, these few years in the fifties, between the age of 25 and 30, were most important for the direction of his career.

For about 5 years, the second half of the fifties, he ran a studio with a Chinese friend, an interior architect called Kho Liang Ie. This collaboration provoked new sensitivities such as an improved feeling for material and color. That colleague designed interiors and furniture; he made graphic design. Together they designed exhibitions. The cooperation brought very good and fruitful years.

Since then he designed exhibitions, next to printed matter. The experience of his basic training in that exhibition company never left him. The third dimension is pre-dominantly there, often visible in his graphic work.

total design By 1963 he founded Total Design with five colleagues*: the first large designstudio in his country. * Ben Bos, Friso Kramer, Benno Wissing and the Schwarz brothers.

It was the right time too: trees grew into heaven!

They were given the most fantastic jobs a designer could

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dream of. The philosophy was straightforward; information in its clearest form was their main concern. The graphic grid was a valued tool through which order in typography could be created. The modern sans serif typeface was, as an ultimate expression of its time, preferable above classic fonts. With these means they designed corporate identities, signing systems, and all sorts of typographicand graphic solutions. Their work gained much influence in the visual field.

technical developments During the fifties and early sixties graphic design became heavily touched by technological changes in the printing industry. Letterpress printing gave way to offset; monotype and linotype were replaced by digital typesetting. He was always very fascinated by these shifts in culture. It brought him, in 1967, to the design of an experimental ‘New Alphabet’, that fitted the digital technique in a more logic way. As I said before, he was always much influenced by neighbouring disciplines; the interaction almost always created unexpected challenges. Architecture, for instance, with its more durable approach, gave him more direction than graphic design itself. Today – parallel to the development of computer technology, graphic design is no longer graphic design in its purest meaning; no longer only print

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on paper. It overflows all neighbouring borders. Graphic designers now are players in a large 3-dimensional creative sphere. And since development is going faster and faster, it seems much more difficult to develop a personal, distighuishing and lasting direction.

looking from the outside After more than 50 years of practice, he feels he is now mainly looking from the outside. What he sees is a most fascinating array of challenging questions for today’s designers: · do designers still think that their profession is important for the welfare of society? · is graphic design still seen as a means to express the essence of a message? · is graphic design – as a discipline – able to create order in the world of messages? · what is the main source of inspiration for designers today?

And so on!

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colofon

all texts written by wim crouwel edited by toon lauwen translation by inotherwords, d’laine camp designed by steffen maas thanks to jop van bennekom, joost elffers, robert van rixtel, vivianne sassen printed by quantes/artoos communicationgroup, rijswijk zh

copyright Š 2010 isbn 978 94 90628 024 wim crouwel in his own words was published in the netherlands by lauwen books, van galenstraat 34, 2518 er the hague, the netherlands. waysofthinking.nl

all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ways of thinking wim crouwel in his own words is the second publication in the ways of thinking series; devoted to the thoughts, theories and mindsets of creative professionals: designers, photographers, art directors, marketeers and advertising people.

Every book in the series is meant to be a small manifesto of the ideas, aspirations or utopian dreams of a remarkable person.

Distribution runs directly and exclusively via the internet, speciďŹ c events and selected booksellers around the world.

Other title(s) of interest: Franska Stuy. De Goudvis is hot and coming (in Dutch) You can order at www.waysofthinking.nl

lauwen books

lauwen books in his own words presents a selection of lectures and articles delivered by Wim Crouwel between 1973 and 2006.

The texts by Crouwel, who has lectured all over the world, are highly interesting because they document a lengthy and important career as a designer (professor and museum director) that spans from the early postwar years until the first decade of the 21st century. This material is inspiring because it reflects a highly committed professional: a pragmatist, critical observer and, on some crucial points, even a utopian. The outgoing/diplomatic personality of Crouwel, who has always dressed immaculately, is shown in a small portfolio of portraits, made by different photographers over a period of almost sixty-five years.

isbn 978 94 90628 024