January 5, 2009
Two Dutch Logos
As it happens, that rigorous geometric tradition carries on still today in professional graphic design, most notably in a specially-designed logo for an architectural conference held not long ago in Rotterdam.
Karen Knols, the graphic designer of Studio Lampro, implemented the DOCOMOMO logos — both type and mark — on murals and printed matter for the conference. In her view, the abstract DOCOMOMO mark represents a spirit of transformation — not unlike a building moving from one state to another — which, through subtle but significant alterations, arrives eventually as another identity entirely. (The theme of the conference was The Challenge of Change.)
The talks at the conference reinforced the awareness of Modernist design traditions alternately revised or reused; the Van Nelle coffee, tea and tobacco refinery of the late 1920s, where the conference occurred, is now an office building called the Design Factory. Speakers from Germany to Ghana presented examples of Modernist renovations, both successful and disastrous: the Gropius’ Master’s House at the Bauhaus, for instance, was given a peaked roof by East German authorities. (It is now a picturesque cottage.)
Graphic designers in the Netherlands possess a similar challenge: they can reuse or reject. Some continue the Dutch tradition of abstract minimalism, while others elect to incorporate new media trends and more progressive design idioms into their work. It may well be the older generation which tends to adhere to a more traditional approach (called ‘real design’ by some), while a younger generation is more likely to adopt shadows, buttons and other easy options in web design programs. David Knowles uses the term ‘crossover designers’ to address those who create work for both traditional and new media.
Corbijn started as a photographer 30 years ago; today, he designs record covers and anything that appeals to him. He had no training in graphic design and doesn’t study it now. He sees the logo as “playful and very un-corporate” and reminds me that he is accustomed to criticism and doesn’t care what people think of his logo.
The ultimate question of whether playfulism and pictorialism will make a comeback, or whether abstraction and tradition will continue to prevail in Dutch design (and elsewhere) may be a non-issue, as most information today inhabits a decidedly virtual arena. The Metro stations around Rotterdam inform travelers through digitized panels with train arrivals in real time (as do some New York City subways) and pictures aren’t typically essential. Modernism’s efforts to establish worldwide visual communication systems in the 1920s — as demonstrated in Otto Neurath’s family of isotype pictographs, for instance — seem to us now as relatively ancient, a part of history as remote as silent movies and the once ‘universal’ alphabets of Herbert Bayer and others. As representations of graphic form, they remain interesting, if not necessarily relevant, today.
Observed
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Observed
By Virginia Smith
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