Dutch Design Heroes: Wim Crouwel
By Graham Sturt
An English Creative Director in Amsterdam
Introduction
I was first introduced to the delights of Dutch design whilst at University in Hull (in the North East of England) between 1990–1993. One of my tutors, a practicing designer called Andy Edwards, opened my eyes to the wonderful work coming out of the Netherlands and I soon became intrigued and fascinated to learn more about it. I remember being hypnotically drawn from the outset to the work of the Dutch agencies and individuals active in this period, particularly that of Wim Crouwel, Studio Dumbar, Koeweiden Postma, Erik van Blokland, UNA, Irma Boom and Hard Werken. To me, an impressionable and ambitious English graphic design student, it felt highly creative, spirited and conceptual, the total opposite of a lot of the very commercial work coming out of the UK at that time. To add to it all the Dutch language aspect (completely alien to me at this point) also made each piece of work strangely exotic, regardless of the actual content.
Now 22 years further into my design career and based in the Netherlands I’ve decided to track down some of those inspirational Dutch design heroes for a series of creative conversations.
To open the series I met with Wim Crouwel at his Amsterdam home.
Creative Conversation #1, Wim Crouwel
Thursday 5th November 2015
Wim Crouwel’s wife Judith invites me in, and on entering their home, I’m immediately aware that they have impeccable taste. A quick survey of the living room reads like a history lesson into some of the most influential pieces of design furniture ever produced. A Rietveld Red Blue chair sits in a corner beside a beautiful Rennie Mackintosh Willow seat, whilst a Le Corbusier chaise longue nestles elegantly in the mid-distance close to an Eileen Gray side table. Across the hall I pass the most amazingly sculptural, Frank Gehry designed, bent plywood chair illuminated by a Poul Henningsen pendant lamp. I take a moment to take this all in, and imagine that Wim and his wife have collected all these iconic pieces over many years, with the acquisition of each piece having it’s own story to tell.
At this point Wim Crouwel enters the room, surveying myself and Eva (our photographer for the day) for a few seconds, before warmly greeting us and offering us coffee. We make a little introduction to him and are soon ready to begin.
G: “You must have been interviewed many many times. What’s the question everyone asks you and do you have a stock answer prepared for it?”
W: “Well, in general, it’s usually the final question: ‘What advice would you give to young designers?’ My answer is always the same: ‘Pick up everything that happens in the world and try to find your own way.’”
G: “And is there a question, which is never asked, which you would like to be asked?”
W: “I don’t think there is a question that is never asked to me, but I think it could be something around the question:
‘What makes you tick? Why are you interested in the things you are doing?’
And that is also difficult to give an answer to, because it’s your life, it’s full of unexpected things. For me it was the beginning, that makes it interesting, this question, what makes you tick. When I finished art school, I didn’t know what to do, absolutely not. I thought I would be a painter, because I made paintings and landscape paintings and portraits and that was the main thing we learnt at art school. It was just, by great luck, that I met people that directed me more or less in the direction that I was going. First of all, I decided to leave Groningen, because I thought by myself, if I stay in Groningen, nothing will happen, so I have to go to Amsterdam. I’d never been to Amsterdam, until we made an excursion with the school to the Rijksmuseum. Immediately after the end of art school I had to do military service, for more than two years. An awful period, absolutely awful. Lost time. When I came out of military service, I decided to settle myself in Amsterdam and just see what was coming. I visited some designers I knew from that time, including Dick Elffers, famous poster designers. They were very friendly and I was absolutely overwhelmed by what they told me about being a designer. It was a complete new world.
Dick Elffers told me: ‘I know a job for you. I’m designing exhibitions and there is a company that executes my exhibitions all the time and they need a designer, someone like you.’ Although he didn’t know what I did, because I only showed him some paintings. He said: ‘You are the right man to go to that company and you can help me, executing my stands and my exhibitions.’
I was immediately hired by the head of the company as he had a great belief in Dick Elffers. That was just the beginning: being in a new environment with designers and exhibitions. I had never made an exhibition myself and knew nothing about it but immersed myself into the whole thing. The same year there came a large commission from the Marshall Plan, from Paris. They asked the company to do exhibitions for two ships. The commission came with two Swiss designers and the Italian architect Lanfranco Bombelli. I will never forget that name. One graphic designer was Ernst Scheideggerand the other Gerard Ifert — just coming from art school in Basel and the same age as me. They lived in Amsterdam for two years and I became friends with them. They really introduced me into the Swiss way of thinking about design: Akzidenz Grotesk as a lettering, using photography in combination with type.
That was my first encounter with design. Just by sheer luck that I met these people in this company, through the help of Dick Elffers. I worked in this company for two or three years and then I decided to start on my own. And starting on my own, that was a… I’m telling you the whole story now…” [laughter]
G: “Indeed. Then maybe I should…” W: “Structure it?”
G: “Exactly! So, I read that Joseph Müller-Brockmann was a big influence on you. Tell me something about that.”
W: “Yes. I met Müller-Brockmann on one of my trips to Switzerland. He later introduced me to his friends: Armin Hofmann, he was a teacher, Emil Ruder, Chief of the Basel School of Arts, Richard Lohse and Max Bill. In 1957, I became a member of the AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale), I got to know Müller-Brockmann really well and we became good friends. I was absolutely highly influenced by his posters.”
G: “In what way was he influential to you?”
W: “The way he designed posters; especially his almost abstract posters for the Tonhalle in Zürich. I saw his work in exhibitions and he showed me around his studio.
I saw his work in exhibitions and he showed me around his studio. My very first encounter with posters was, however, Cassandre. These posters were hung on the walls of my art school in Groningen. They were our printed teachers, more or less.
I didn’t know about the Swiss designers at that time, so after meeting these Swiss designers, I grabbed everything and was highly influenced by their way of thinking and visual realisations. Müller-Brockmann was famous for his cool vision and Armin Hofmann was a bit more poetic. Gradually I became a designer.”
G: “By experience and learning with these great people?”
W: “Yes.”
G: “Was the Swiss Style really well established at that point?”
W: “Yes, really well. It began at the end of the war so it was well developed by then. In the fifties, Swiss design was really the most advanced way of thinking about design. Countries like France or even America had still a very old-fashioned way of thinking about design.”
G: “How was British design at that point?”
W: “At that time, I hardly knew anything about British design. I never met British designers. I met, for the first time, British designers in AGI, of course, because they had quite famous members, like Henrion. Henrion was the first (German born) British designer I got to know. I met him at the AGI meetings and he was a real teacher, because of the way he talked about his profession and so on.
Then in 1962, when we had the idea to start with Total Design, we went to Henrion. I remember he had a beautiful studio as an extension to his house that was designed by Richard Rogers. One of the first works of Richard Rogers was the studio of Henrion.
And we asked him: ‘Why do you think that large commissions like KLM are not given to designers in Holland?’ And then he said the famous words that I’ve often repeated: ‘Institutions like to talk to institutions’.
If you are alone and working with one assistant and you become ill, everything stops. That is impossible for large companies. So you need a kind of structure in the office to handle large clients. So he steered this more or less into a good direction. We also met Fletcher Forbes Gill (that later became Pentagram) who started a year before us.
They had a studio, each of them with their own clients, with three small units. That was a structure that was interesting for us. So when we started Total Design we used the structure of Fletcher Forbes Gill and the philosophy of Henrion.”
G: “Essentially you were the first multidisciplinary design agency in the Netherlands?”
W: “Yes, although I think Tel Design was also founded around the same time.”
G: “How did that work?”
W: “It happened on the right moment. Suddenly we got all the interesting commissions in Holland.”
G: “And how did you meet the other founders?”
W: “In principal we were all good friends. We knew each other from the profession and by meetings of the Dutch Design Association. Benno Premsela, who was a famous designer at that time, knew us all and he was the one who brought us together. The brothers Schwarz, two business men, who were looking for a new direction in their lives, were friends with Premsela. Benno said: ‘You should start a design office, and I know some people for you’. We talked for about a year about ideas and how to start and then finally in 1963 we started.”
G: “Tell me about the beginnings of Total Design. Where was the first office?”
W: “There was an old canal house from the 17th century on the Herengracht. It was specially restored for us by the Schwarz brothers. So we started in a brand new studio, sheer luck.”
G: “I’m imagining that as founders you all had your own idea about how to direct the company. Was it easy or difficult to find a combined direction for the company?
W: Well, we all had our own philosophy, but Benno Wissing was the one who formulated our ideas mostly. Let me honestly say: he was the most intelligent man from the whole bench, so he was quite important in structuring the whole thing. Unfortunately he died a few years ago, and he was also one of the first one to leave Total Design at the end of the sixties.”
G: “And you were the second last to leave, with Ben Bos leaving last?”
W: “Ben left the last, yes. I left, let’s see, around eighty, but the Schwarz brothers already left at the beginning of the seventies. They left because Benno Wissing had his ideas on the company in such a way that the Schwarz brothers couldn’t agree with him. He was sometimes a real communist in his thinking, you know, he thought that the company should be owned by all the workers, but we were absolutely held by the money of the Schwarz brothers and he wanted to be, let’s say, the boss of the money of the Schwarz brothers and so there came discussion. In the end of the sixties the discussion became stronger and Benno decided to go out.”
G: “Of course ‘Total’ still lives on as ‘Total Identity’ today. How do you feel about Total Identity now? Do you think they are carrying on your legacy in some way?”
W: “Yes they are… I’m looking for words, sorry… they widened their field of activities. They still have our large diapositive archive of all the works. There is someone who is in charge of this archive. Every time when we need something from that period we go to him and he delivers us the illustrations.”
G: “Amazing!”
W: “We are still very good friends. Every now and then I receive an email with questions for me that were sent to Total Identity. We still have a very good relationship and I am invited every now and then to come along and have a look. It is a completely different company now. They wanted to widen the scope. It is also the whole society that changes. They are a large company now, they have many foundations.”
G: “Mentioning the archive brings me to another question. How did it feel to be approached by the Design Museum to put together a retrospective of your work and how did that initially come about?”
W: “Well, I knew Tony Brook.”
G: “From Spin?”
W: “From Spin. And he was a good friend. He collected my posters. And when I visited him for the first time in his house, in every room, he had my posters on the wall. It was the first time that I met someone who absolutely was dedicated to my work. I hardly understood. It was him who had the idea to make an exhibition, together with The Foundry who did my type. Together they approached Deyan Sudjic from the Design Museum with the idea to have an exhibition of my work. And they agreed.”
G: “It was a beautiful exhibition. You must have been proud?”
W: “Yes, it was great. Tony Brook did a lot of the work and a lot of interviews and, together with an architect, designed the exhibitions.”
G: “How did it feel when the exhibition came to the Stedelijk Museum? Of course you worked extensively with them throughout your career.”
W: “Yes, it was a homecoming.”
G: “Really special.”
W: “We used the installation from London, but it was in the period that the new Stedelijk building was not yet ready. It was the last year of the old building. I had about five galleries and they tried to install the exhibition more or less like London. But in London the exhibition was much more complete. It was actually my second exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum. In 1979, when I had worked for about fifteen years for the museum, they made my first exhibition, a smaller exhibition. And then the large exhibition. That exhibition also went to Glasgow.
G: “Will the exhibition continue to travel to other cities?”
W: “It only went to Glasgow, and then it was over.”
G: “So if I go back to Tony Brook, I have the feeling that you’ve inspired many other really great designers. For instance, if I look at the Stedelijk Museum, and the work of Experimental Jetset, it’s clearly inspired by your own work. How does that feel? Is it really flattering?”
W: “Yes, that’s a good word: flattering. I’m flattered by it. Absolutely. And they become good friends with you and we have, every now and then, meetings and discussions. They were happy that they could do the work for the Whitney Museum in New York. That was great, and we discussed quite a lot about it.”
G: “Do you still keep active in design?”
W: “At the moment, not that much. I’m 87 now and I hardly work anymore. Only some work for friends.”
G: “Do you miss it?”
W: “Not really. I begin to get tired. And then the problem is that I have Parkinson. It makes my memory bad and even my speech is not what it should be. But I still meet a lot of friends all the time and I’m invited everywhere.”
G: “So in that respect, is there a project that you didn’t do that you wish you had?”
W: “Well, the only thing… I’ve never worked for government. We worked for a lot of cities in Holland, we did corporate identity programs, but never for the government, because we always thought that government was a bad example. And now, the last few years, they have their own alphabet, lettering system and so on. It slowly begins. Design can also do something for a country. And that is a kind of commission that I would have liked to do.”
G: “One of the reasons why I was intrigued to come to talk to you in the first place was because when I was at University in the early 90’s I had a tutor who introduced me to Dutch Design coming out of the Netherlands at that time. I became really interested in the work of Studio Dumbar, Hard Werken, UNA, Irma Boom and yourself amongst others. So, I wanted to hear, from your perspective, how would you define Dutch Design?”
W: “It all began with conceptual thinking. That was the basic of the whole development in Holland. And that began in the art school in Enschede, with Joop Hardy, the director. Hardy was a famous director, he was also a professor in Delft in the period when I was there. He was a philosopher and he changed the course in Enschede at the art school. I know that so well because my son went to that school.”
G: “Your son is an architect isn’t he?”
W: “I have two sons, one is an architect and the other a graphic designer. He didn’t want to go to the Amsterdam art school, so he went somewhere as far away from here as possible. Exactly in the period when Joop Hardy was there as the director. Hardy changed the existing Bauhaus system completely. Instead of one preparatory course and then specialisation, he gave them three years preparatory course and one year specialisation. And he developed the whole idea of conceptual thinking. So it all started in that art school. And that gradually has been taken over by the other art schools in Holland. So they forgot the Bauhaus system and went into the new way of thinking. Much more experimental than before. That was to my opinion the beginning of the whole idea of Dutch Design.
Today, Dutch Design is a marketing slogan, I don’t believe in the word anymore. It is nonsense.
New things are happening all over the world and we had our fine period of conceptual thinking and there are still a lot of young designers who develop very well. So the word Dutch Design doesn’t mean that much to me at the moment, as it has been, in the beginning.”
G: “When was this golden period?”
W: “I would say, during the nineties. End of the eighties, nineties. In the seventies, design was out. In Total Design, we had a lot of critics in the seventies. In the eighties suddenly design was in again. Postmodernism and so on came along. And during that period, Dutch Design developed in a certain way and in the nineties it was really the honest beginning of Dutch Design. With conceptual thinking, with new experiments.”
G: “Moving on, I brought a book along with me, ‘The Debate’, about your famous public debate on design with Jan van Toorn. Can you tell me about that event?
W: It was a fantastic evening and due to an exhibition of Jan van Toorn in the Fodor museum. It is now called Foam. It was in that time an annex of the Stedelijk Museum. They had all exhibitions of Dutch designers, painters and sculptors. They organised an exhibition of Jan van Toorn and I did the catalogue. That was the beginning and then the director of the Stedelijk Museum asked us to do a discussion together. It was quite an evening, quite an evening.”
G: “But you were friendly rivals?”
W: “Oh yes. We were very good friends. But I don’t agree with him, completely not. The way he thinks about design is completely different. He is much more theoretical than I am. And I hated his way of thinking about design, like he must have hated my idea, but we were fortunately very good friends. So we’ve discussed quite a lot together and still do.”
G: “Fantastic. I looked into his work, I wasn’t familiar with it before, and it appears more abstract and radical.”
W: “Yes, more propaganda. He learned a lot from Lissitzky the Russian Constructivist. He is much more a constructivist in the old sense of the way than I am. I am a Swiss designer, compared to him. But we see each other quite a lot and you should actually go to him.”
G: “Thank you, yes, I will. Particularly because of the debate as well. I’m fascinated by it.”
W: “It is interesting that they translated the debate into English and publish now the same book in English.”
G: “If I can go back to the PTT, you produced a lot of work over the years with them, particularly the numbers stamps.
Our agency, VBAT, has the new postal service, POSTNL, as a client and we created the new identity for them recently. I wanted to know how you felt about the logo?”
W: “Well, I don’t understand the logo. With this…”
G: “We call it the plectrum”
W: “Yes, I don’t understand where it comes from.”
G: “It is from the three parts of the offer, postal delivery, online and letter delivery. We were asked to emphasise the three parts of the business, so we came up with a three sided shape.”
W: “Oh, I see. Yes, well… I see those kind of logos more. Honestly, I don’t think it is such a strong logo. I would have done a complete different thing! [Laughing] Sorry!”
G: “No, no! It’s fine.” [Also laughing]
W: “It is the kind of logo that I don’t understand. It doesn’t explain to me what you tell me now.”
G: “It needs to be communicated?”
W: “Yes. It’s decorative, it’s very decorative. People will know it very well, I think, by now. That is the thing with logos: that is where you don’t understand why they did it and they become known by the people and become familiar and then you live with it.”
G: “Yes. Another one of our clients is de Bijenkorf. The logo was famously designed by your own hero Joseph Müller-Brockmann…”
W: “Don’t touch the logo! It is famous!”
G: “Do you think it has stood the test of time?”
W: “It is a fantastic logo. The shape and the typography. It is a fantastic logo. I hope you won’t change it.”
G: “Well, we’ve never been allowed to and you’re right, it’s iconic. Next let’s talk about the Modernist movement. It seems your name is always attached to it. Were you conscious of that when you were actually creating your work?”
W: “It was in the time, during the fifties, when I developed as a designer. I got to know about the history of design, especially architecture. I was very much interested in architecture. I met famous architects, I met Rietveldpersonally in 1953 at an exhibition where I also worked. So we met and I bought a chair from him in that time. And I met other modern designers, but especially architects. And I read the book of Jan Tschichold so I became highly influenced by that whole way of thinking. It came partly out of Constructivism but I thought it was the architects who developed the whole idea of Modernism. I was highly influenced by architecture. The Van Nellefactory for instance, in Rotterdam. I met the architect. The fifties was when I was formed, more or less, and then I felt myself also a Modernist.”
G: “There was a Dutch movement wasn’t there? It was attached to Modernism, but it had more to do with architecture?”
W: “Yes, architecture and Piet Zwart a graphic designer who became well known. So there were some designers in that period who I’ve known personally very well fortunately. They became good friends and highly influenced me, so gradually I became a Modernist.”
G: “Did you feel connected to the movement?”
W: “We knew each other, but I was young in that period and the people who created Modernism were an older generation. Piet Zwart was 90 when he died, and that was in the eighties so I was quite a lot younger. I met him and I even followed him up at Bruynzeel, the wood company in Zaandam. He was the main designer of that company. And I took over his graphic work when he finished. So I knew him very well. All these meetings influenced me enormously.”
G: “Do you consider yourself a Modernist?”
W: “Well, I don’t really know, because my work is on one hand influenced by the Modernists and their straightforward way of thinking. The functionalism, let’s say the basis of Modernism. I am a real functionalist in my way of thinking of structuring my work and finding good solutions for the communication of something. But at the same time I’m an aesthetic man. Aestheticism is very important in my life. So, for me it was always a fight between functionalism and form. And sometimes it was a real battle. And every now and then I was working on a commission and I thought I should follow my basic instinct on functionalism, but thought aesthetically it was not the right way. Let me give you an example.
When I started to work for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1964 I decided to create one grid for all the catalogues and posters and to choose for one typeface for everything. I also decided to make it a magazine for the museum instead of different catalogues for the painters and the sculptors that were on show.
My idea was the Stedelijk Museum was what I had to communicate first of all and not the artist on show. And the director of the museum agreed with me. So I set for myself a set of rules and regulations that I wanted to follow. It worked like this and I absolutely wanted this. I did it for twenty years. But there were many moments that I thought if I had given myself some more freedom I could do better work. So that was a very strange feeling I had every now and then. Even with the discussion with the director of the museum, who understood my problems. But he always followed me. He was a great client and my best friend. The greatest client I ever had. First in the Van Abbe Museum he was a director in the fifties and than later on in the Stedelijk, until he finished and retired in 1985. It was always a struggle, between functionalism and my aesthetic feelings and he understood it quite well.”
G: “Do you think that legacy has continued, because I think there has been a lot of discussion with the latest Stedelijk identity.”
W: “Mevis and van Deursen? Well, I agree with what they do. It is a strong identity. If you compare it to what Thonik did with the Boijmans Museum, that is also a very strong identity, but then I prefer the one from the Stedelijk. It’s cooler, it’s black and white. The Boijmans Museum is much more decorative. I must say, I compare these developments quite well. And my heart goes to the Amsterdam side, although I also admire the people who do the Rotterdam thing. In the Stedelijk identity, I didn’t like the S. When they started with the S, I thought: Oh Christ! They are going in the wrong direction. The S always reminds me of Singer Sewing machines.”
G: “Or Simplex bikes, even?”
W: “Yes. But then fortunately what they did with the catalogues and posters, I feel, the way they use the S now, is a kind of symbol somewhere in the corner. I agree with them. So I follow them very carefully.”
G: “For us computers are part of what we do everyday and the majority of the time you were working they weren’t. If Apple computers had been available when you started up, do you think you would have embraced them?”
W: “Of course! My last year in Total Design, in 1979/80, before I left, we introduced the Aesthedes machine.
We were the first company in Holland to have the Aesthedes. It was a very large computer with three screens. One for lettering, one for colour and one for the drawing. We were not allowed to use it ourselves as designers, but we had operators. We bought one of these machines on good conditions, we were lucky, because Jelle van der Toorn, who was one of the designers from Total Design, helped the company of the Aesthedes to develop that machine for design purposes. So he got one for a low price. But they were a million you know, they were enormous and so my first meeting was with that machine. But before that time, in the fifties and sixties, I worked for IBM. That was a very good client of me. So I happened to know computers from my work for IBM. I was highly influenced by the whole idea of thinking and that’s why in 1967 I designed my New Alphabet. It was my reaction on the development of the computers.”
G: “I read that it was a reaction to the limitations of the cathode ray tube technology used by early data display screens and phototypesetting equipment.”
W: “The number of dots available, it was a very low resolution machine at that time. So round shapes changed every time. With 6 points lettering or 12 or 24 points lettering. You need more dots to make nicer lines. So I thought I should do a typeface without round curves, only with straight lines because than it always stays the same. And that’s how I came to the idea of the New Alphabet. It is a kind of example. I designed it, knowing that you couldn’t use it. It was unreal, but it was more or less an exercise for myself in thinking for modern machines.”
G: “How did you feel when the New Alphabet was reused by Peter Savilleand Brett Wickens for the Joy Division album Substance in the late 1980s?”
W: “I didn’t know Peter Saville. I met him much later. An interesting thing is that one of my heroes within architecture is Mies van der Rohe of course and I met Peter Saville for the first time in the pavilion of Mies van der Rohein Barcelona. We had a meeting of design there, and we were both invited and we met for the first time in that pavilion. That was absolutely a moment I will never forget. He is a great designer.”
G: “What I love about him is he has always remained on the outside as well. He’s not become mainstream. A fascinating character. So, going back to the design of the New Alphabet as a reaction on the development of computers in design. Was emerging technology something you were interested in?”
W: “I was interested enormously in computers. And they were large machines at that time and I tried in Total Design to make a kind of set up with a projector and a type projector to make images on the screen as a kind of new way of sketching. So I set a whole installation with a screen and two projectors. It all went to nothing but I was so intrigued by these things that it kept me thinking all the time.”
G: “It must have been a very exciting time? I guess we take it for granted now, that we have all this technology to hand.”
W: “It is an adventure, a completely new world. And if I think of the development today, the fast development and what is going to happen in the coming years is enormous. I’m very interested in that.”
G: “How do you feel about the majority of communication today being designed for digital screens?”
W: “That’s a period I missed, I can’t do that, I work on the computer of course, I have my iMac, but I can only do a few programs. Every time I have to do something, I call my son and ask him how to do it. So I have him quite a lot on the phone to help me and I cannot follow anymore, but I’m very much interested. It’s a pity that I can’t start now today.”
G: “On the subject of the future, there is a famous picture of you which shows you dressed in a futuristic suit. I think it looks like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey.”
W: “Oh! That was used in London in the exhibition and in the end also in Amsterdam. That was a photo shoot for a friend of mine who was a fashion designer. Alice Edeling was her name. She designed these kind of dresses.”
G: “I thought it was maybe Paco Rabanne.”
W: “Yes, that period. And she asked me to be a model for her. The photographs have been done by Paul Huf, who was a quite famous photographer in that time and a good friend of mine. And they were done for the Dutch magazine Avenue that was a quite famous magazine in that period. And suddenly, these photographs became illustrations of me. Everyone used these photographs, all the time. And they don’t understand it was just a photo shoot. I never wear these costumes, they were impossible! With metal bands here and metal bands there. It was impossible absolutely.”
G: “But when I looked back at photographs of you and even today I see you’re a very elegant man. How important back when you started your career with Total Design was projecting an image?”
W: “Let me say honestly: I worked on it. Because in art school already I made dresses for my mother. There was a moment in art school when I thought I would be a fashion designer. The thing fashion designer almost didn’t exist in that period. And when the first plastic material came, I made myself a dress of plastic, a coat. So I worked for friends and made them clothing. It was the period where we had plus fours, I had a very short one and a very modern one and so I thought about it. But I only sometimes thought that I would be a fashion designer. But at the same time, I worked on my own image.”
G: “Yes, that’s really clear.”
W: “It belongs to the idea of being a designer, I think.”
G: “Indeed, I see a lot of pictures of you wearing what looks like bespoke tailored three-piece suits?”
W: “Yes, they were especially made. I had the same tailor as Paul Huf. We were good friends and we always went together to the man.”
G: “I think designers nowadays are less formal, scruffy even. Do you think that?
W: Well, yes the whole image, you wear jeans. That’s the time. I also wear jeans. And I’m not that interested anymore today. I never get my clothes made anymore. I have my wardrobe, I’m too old now. But indeed, I have worked on it.”
G: “So, in your opinion what is the greatest achievement in your career?”
W: “I think the work for the Stedelijk Museum. It is the basic work for my whole career. I love to be reminded of that period. It was my best client I ever had, it was one of my best friends I had and I like to look back at that period. Later, when I became director of the Museum Boijmans in the eighties I had to work with designers and I asked the people from 8vo, Hamish Muir and Mark Holt, and I was highly influenced by that. They were pupils from Emil Ruder and Wolfgang Weingart in Basel.”
G: “They also produced beautiful magazines as 8vo of course?”
W: “Fantastic. They asked me to do an article on lower case typography in Holland. I wrote it and I invited them to become the designers of the Museum Boijmans.
And they worked for about seven years for me, wonderful work. They had the Swiss design influence by Wolfgang Weingart. Like the famous American designer, what is her name?”
G: “April Greiman?”
W: “April Greiman! Who was last week here.”
G: “Oh yes?”
W: “She visited me. She was here for the opening of the Philippe Apeloig exhibition. You should see that, a fantastic exhibition. He started his career in Total Design, that’s why he has an exhibition now here. That’s part of our history. A fantastic lettering man, and he invited April Greiman to come over.”
G: “That’s amazing.”
W: “I’ve met her before, she is also a pupil of Wolfgang Weingart and he had quite an influence on the Swiss direction of design. He was the first one who smashed Swiss design and made his own turn. Very interesting.”
G: “So, coming back to the subject of lettering. Excluding Helvetica, what’s your favourite typeface?”
W: “Frutiger. The step after Univers.
I embraced Univers for the Stedelijk Museum, because it was the first typeface with the same x height in every grade and I love to work with it.
The Frutiger that was developed for the airport in Paris and later on became a script is an overworked Univers. Very readable, very straightforward and in the tradition of the Helvetica.”
G: “If you could do it all again, would you do it the same way? And if not, what would you change?”
W: “I don’t think I can change myself. With my way of thinking I would do it all over again. No, I have no intention to change anything. I see from my career the weak spots and the strong spots and if I had to do it all over, I hope it will be the same way. I hope that’s an answer?”
G: “That’s perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you.”
About the author:
Graham Sturt is an English Creative Director based in Amsterdam.
Originally from England, he lived and worked in London for more than a decade before relocating to Amsterdam in 2007 to follow his passion for Dutch design.
