Wim Crouwel is among the great Dutch design icons, he is indeed the single most influential graphic designer in post-war Holland. Famous for injecting a creative approach in designing letters, Crouwel produced typographic designs that captured the essence of the emerging computer age.
"Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey", a recently opened exhibition at Glasgow's Lighthouse, celebrates the designer through key moments in his career, analysing his approach and exploring his innovative use of grid-based layouts and typographic systems to produce consistently striking asymmetric visuals.
Born in 1928 in Groningen, Crouwel trained as a painter, but then became interested in the design and architectural ideas of the Nieuwe Zakelijkheid movement. After moving to Amsterdam in the '50s he started taking evening classes at the graphic design department of the IVKNO (Instituut voor Kunst Nijverheids Onderwijs) and developed an interest in Swiss typography. He felt indeed attracted by the clean and minimalist approach of the letters and the elements suggested by Swiss designers including Karl Gerstner, Gérard Ifert and Ernst Scheidegger.
Crouwel shared with them a sense of order, an elemental and basic aesthetic and, though he deeply loved art and design, he soon abandoned his passion for more expressive works to dedicate himself to finding a pure aesthetic.
In his mind design had a precise function, putting order to things and provide people with clarity, even though Crouwel didn't always abide to his personal principles and at times used awkward juxtapositions of forms, colours and types.
In 1957 hand-drawn letterforms appeared in Crouwel's designs, around the same time he created what became one of his best known posters for an exhibition by Fernand Léger.
The letterforms featured were composed as a typographical interpretation of Lèger's works, and, in the following decades, typographic characters that drew precise correspondences evoking the characteristics of specfic artists became Crouwel's trademark skill.
A few years later, in 1963, he founded the Total Design studio, and became known as the designer of posters, catalogues and exhibitions of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
The studio often found itself designing entire alphabets, even though that wasn't one of its ambitions: for an exhibition by Claes Oldenburg at the Stedelijk, Crouwel created a poster characterised by letters that called to mind Oldenburg's works and then designed an entire alphabet for the artist.
In 1967, Crouwel and TD hit the headlines when they designed the New Alphabet, a typeface suited to the composing system using the cathode-ray tube technology. The system was actually designed with a high tech world in mind as the letters were drawn on a variable grid (5 to 9 units, based on the square, though the system allowed for horizontal and vertical scaling).
In a way the New Alphabet was perfectly tuned on the futuristic and Space Age trend that at the time was also influencing fashion. Crouwel created the font as an experiment, he claimed it was "over-the-top and never meant to be really used" since it was unreadable, but the New Alphabet received massive coverage and a lot of criticism.
More experiments followed with grid-based letterforms, inspired by his interest in crystallography and the crystal structures of the patterns generated by early computer technology. The letterforms developed into the Fodor and the Stedelijk systems, characterised by a futuristic computer style.
In the early '70s Italian manufacturer Olivetti invited Crouwel to design an alphabet for electric typewriters. The graphic designer developed for the company a monoline sans-serif with three widths based on a rectangle with 45 degree corners that the company called Politene. In the end the machine for which the system was intended wasn't produced as there was no more interest in electric typewriters and Crouwel retained the copyright for these letterforms.
Two years later he developed the standard numeral stamps for the Dutch PPT based on the Olivetti Politene designs, using the word Nederland and the numerals indicating the value.
Quite a few young designers began using characters for the New Alphabet in the '80s (in music the characters reappeared on the cover of Joy Division's 1988 album "Substance"- View this photo and on the 12” single for "Atmosphere" - View this photo), so London-based type company The Foundry approached Crouwel and asked him to revive the New Alphabet for The Foundry's Architype series.
The most successful face Crouwel created for The Foundry is the Gridnik, based on the alphabet be created for Olivetti; another one is The Foundry Catalogue that moves from the 1970 alphabet for Claes Oldenburg.
The exhibition at The Lighthouse, edited and produced by The Design Museum in London where "Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey" was launched in 2011, features posters and typographic work spanning over 60 years and it's worth seeing if you missed the London event.
Crouwel's futuristic systems, fonts and types look pretty modern even in our digital age, that's a good enough reason to keep on rediscovering this graphic designer and being inspired by him.
Wim Crouwel - A Graphic Odyssey, The Lighthouse, Gallery One, Glasgow, UK, until 30th June 2013
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Looking so nice caught. Excellent design !! Thanks a lot for sharing !!
Posted by: Color Experts International | April 21, 2013 at 07:09 AM