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Pop, subcultures and the future of graphic design: an interview with Experimental Jetset

Forming in 1997 and united by a love of post-punk music and aesthetics, Amsterdam-based graphic design studio Experimental Jetset went on to become one of the most important and influential practices of the past 20 years. Even those outside of the graphic design bubble will have seen their work: this is the gang behind that oft-plagiarised John & Paul & Ringo & George T-shirt, set out in Helvetica and reinventing the band top in doing so. The three founding members Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen took the studio’s name from 1994’s Sonic Youth album Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (more on that story here ), and those alternative pop culture references still loom large. Nearly two decades since forming, Experimental Jetset’s installation works and graphics have now been housed in the likes of the Stedelijk Museum, Centre Pompidou, Dutch Post Group and New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

As well as client work, the trio has also taught at Amsterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Arnhem’s Artez and Werkplaats Typografie. Just before the team takes a few months off for the summer, we spoke to them about post-punk, countercultural influences and the changes they’ve seen in the Dutch graphic design scene.

Experimental Jetset: Statement&CounterStatement2015

How has your work been shaped by music?

Well, most importantly it was our love of music (and our interest in subcultures such as psychobilly, mod and garage rock) that made us aware of graphic design in the first place, back in the 1980s.

But another way in which we’ve been shaped by music is through our interest in the model of the rock band. A rock band is a very tight socio-economic unit: just two, three or four people, sharing one collective artistic language. For us, this is a much more interesting model than the mainstream design studio, which has a very typical boss/workers hierarchy: “junior” and “senior” designers, interns and directors, “creative” and “administrative” people. We really dislike these traditional separations; we think they create a certain alienation from the end-product.

What we like about the band model is the fact that a band is small enough for every member to feel involved and responsible, but large enough to have the benefits of a collective way of working.

Experimental Jetset: Word-Things in Time-Space (detail), 2016. Installation at Riot Ghent

So the model of the rock band is something we have always been interested in. The t-shirt print we created in 2001 (John & Paul & Ringo & George) can be seen as an example of that. The fact that we named our studio after an album by Sonic Youth, Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, seems relevant as well, in that regard. Also, the first installation we ever created, at SMBA (Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam), back in 1998, was titled Black Metal Machine and revolved around a fictional band. So it’s safe to say this theme has always played a large part in our work, from the very beginning. 

"We find this whole notion of the 'graphic designer as a rock star' completely repulsive." Experimental Jetset

However – when we talk about the model of the rock band, we don’t mean this whole notion of the “graphic designer as a rock star” – that’s an idea that we find completely repulsive. We really hate celebrity culture. For us, the model of the band goes totally against the notion of celebrity. In its ideal form, the band becomes an entity which allows the member to become anonymous. It’s the notion of the collective, not of the individual, that matters to us. 

It feels to me that the post-punk ideas and aesthetics that have influenced you are hard to pin down – or at least more so than straight-up punk, for instance. Can you tell me a little more about what you feel post-punk means to you, and how it shaped your output?

The whole notion of post-punk has probably been our most important inspiration, throughout the years. As we already mentioned in previous interviews – it is through all the various post-punk subcultures in which we were involved (as kids growing up in the 80s) that we became interested in graphic design in the first place. Psychobilly, two-tone ska, new wave, mod, oi, industrial noise, garage rock, skate punk, US hardcore – it was subcultures like these that made us aware of this whole graphic sphere of band logos, record sleeves, fanzines, mini comics, mail art, mix tapes, T-shirt prints, buttons, badges, patches, etc. In a lot of our work, we are still referring to exactly this graphic sphere. 

Experimental Jetset: Space Embodied: The Russian Art of Movement’ (2016) Photo (installation view / detail) by Johannes Schwartz

On top of that, a lot of post-punk subcultures used to have this added element of “social mobility” – which is hard to explain, but what we mean is simply this: subcultures can sometimes function as “gateways”, enabling kids to escape from certain fixed social milieus. As working-class teens, growing up in non-academic surroundings, it was through subcultures such as punk and new wave that we first learned about movements such as Surrealism, Futurism and Dada. In that sense, post-punk was a form of education for us.

To give a very banal example of this – the first time we heard about Bertolt Brecht was actually through psychobilly band King Kurt, who once did a cover version of ‘Mack the Knife’ (originally by Brecht and Weill), back in the mid-80s. So yeah, this is just one quick, random example – but you get the idea.

In short – if it wasn’t for post-punk, we would have never gathered the courage and self-respect needed to apply for art school, and to be involved in something as “artistic” as graphic design.  

But back to your question… Since it was through punk and new wave that we first learned about movements such as Surrealism, Futurism and Dada, post-punk has become somewhat of a “meta-influence”. It is, simply put, the influence through which we filter all other influences. Like a prism or lens, so to speak.

For example – recently, we were working on the spatial design (and graphic design) of Space Embodied: The Russian Art of Movement, 1920–1930, an exhibition that’s currently taking place at Het Nieuwe Instituut ( HNI ) in Rotterdam; and while working on that project, we realised just how much of our thinking about Constructivism has been shaped by 80s post-punk culture.

When it comes to Constructivism, the early 80s (and late 70s) is of course a really interesting period, as a lot of the post-punk aesthetics (the graphic language of new wave, synth-pop, industrial music, etc.) referred quite openly to Russian avant-garde movements (Productivism, Suprematism, Kubo-Futurism, LEF , Agit-Prop, Zaum, etc.).

A very early example is of course Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine but you can also look at record sleeves designed by Neville Brody, Bazooka, Barney Bubbles, Malcolm Garrett, JG Thirlwell (Foetus), New Collective Studio ( NSK /Laibach), Jean-Paul Goude, Peter Saville, etc.

This was a time when pop-culture, post-punk (and gay/queer) subcultures, Trotskyist politics and Constructivist aesthetics really merged, resulting in a very interesting common language. A well-known example would be The Communards . But you could also think of more subcultural bands, like mod/soul outfit The Redskins, or industrial collective Test Dept.

In that same vein, let’s not forget the Red Wedge logo, created by Neville Brody in 1985. And obviously, we’re also thinking here of David King (who sadly recently passed away), and the work he did for the Anti-Nazi League (and related organisations such as Rock Against Racism). 

Anyway – these are just some quick examples, from the top of our heads. But the point we want to make is simply this – our way of thinking about Constructivism is very much shaped by the 80s post-punk surroundings in which we grew up. 

So when we are referring (in an exhibition such as Space Embodied for example) to that whole language of Constructivism, our interpretation is not academic. Our interpretation is much more pop-damaged, much more blackened, much more subcultured.

How would you describe the Dutch approach to graphic design? How has it changed since you formed in 1997?

A lot has changed over the last few decades. 

From the end of World War II up until the 1990s, the Netherlands have been a (more or less) social-democratic country, leaning (culturally and socially) to the left. This was also reflected in graphic design — in general, graphic design was regarded as the embodiment of a certain socialist, modernist ideal: the synthesis of art and the everyday. Society as a Gesamtkunstwerk .

Within this atmosphere, graphic design was considered to be a public platform, not only for utilitarian communication, but also for authorship, and self-expression. The graphic designer was allowed (or better said, expected) to explore the artistic dimension of the medium to the fullest. This meant that, for most designers, there was no real separation yet between “autonomous work” and “commissioned work”: the functionality of a piece of design was also measured by its ability to push certain boundaries, to challenge expectations — but all within the realm of the public, as an integral part of society. 

Experimental Jetset: Provo Station (detail), 2016, at GfZK Leipzig.

However, since the turn of the millennium, Dutch society has slowly transformed itself, from a Scandinavia-style welfare state into a more Anglo-Saxon-style neo-liberal market economy. And this process of dismantling the welfare state has had an immediate effect on graphic design. Most of the public and cultural infrastructure has been destroyed, or will be destroyed soon. Everything has been privatised, commercialised, opened to the market. Most institutes (even the so-called ‘cultural’ institutes) have stopped working with independent designers or small studios, and are collaborating more and more with large communication and advertising agencies. The whole notion of social-democratic design has disappeared, to make way for more neo-liberal concepts such as branding, advertising and marketing. A catastrophic state of affairs, obviously.

Experimental Jetset: Provo Station (detail), 2016, at GfZK Leipzig

As a result, a lot of young, aspiring graphic designers have been pushed out of the public realm, and forced into a much more isolated and hidden infrastructure – an infrastructure of art practices, master courses, post-graduate programs, summer schools, book fairs, zine libraries, small exhibition spaces, self-publishing, etc. It seems that only there, these young designers can exercise the authorship and self-expression that cannot longer be exercised by them in the public space.

On the one hand, you can see this as a really exciting development – all these young people pushing design into completely new, esoteric directions. Some might argue that this can’t even be considered ‘design’ anymore, but we disagree. In a way, we think that what these young people are doing is still closer to ‘proper’ modern graphic design (as in, searching for the synthesis of art and the everyday) than practices such as branding and advertising are. So, we have nothing but respect for these young designers, dwelling in the art underground – they are keeping the spirit of modern graphic design alive.

But on the other hand, it also makes us very sad. We would really like to see these young designers being allowed to manifest themselves in more public spaces. For example – we graduated in 1997, and by 1998 we already designed a mass-produced postage stamp for the Dutch Mail. So, even as very young graphic designers, we were immediately offered a very large, public platform. It makes us sad that a lot of young designers won’t have a chance to make such a public gesture anymore. Maybe as unpaid interns for larger agencies – but not as independent, starting designers. 

So we can’t blame all these young, talented people for withdrawing from mainstream graphic design, and trying their luck in more isolated, art-related practices. It makes us extremely sad, but we can totally understand them.

As for the future – well, thinking about the future, we can’t help but think of that famous Gramsci quote, about being a “pessimist of the mind, and an optimist of the will”. Graphic design won’t be restored until the whole political climate changes. And sadly, social-democratic or socialist alternatives seem almost impossible to envision right now. There are sometimes tiny glimmers of hope on the horizon – but in general, it seems that we will be stuck in a neo-liberal reality for the time being. It’s a nightmare.

But on a more optimistic note – if the political climate does finally change, it means that there are legions of young designers, waiting on the sidelines, ready to take-over. To speak with The Exploited – they truly are the troops of tomorrow.

Experimental Jetset: Left of the International (detail), 2015, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

What projects have you got coming up?

As we’re writing this, it’s the longest day of the year – and the first day of our summer break. We really need it. The first few months of 2016 were so extremely, intensely busy – we’re completely exhausted.

But to answer your question… Right after the holidays, there are three publications we have to work on – a book on the Amsterdam-based architecture studio EventArchitectuur (to be pusblished by Birkhaüser), a catalogue on the work of the Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout (to be published by Wiels and Walther König Verlag), and the latest installment of EP (to be published by Sternberg Press). After the summer, we’ll also continue working on the development of a multiple that will be released later this year, by The Thing Quarterly ( TTQ ) in San Francisco.

There might also be some collaborations coming up with cultural institutes in Eastern Europe – very exciting, and we keep our fingers crossed for that. Then there are some upcoming projects involving our good friend (and brilliant photographer) Johannes Schwartz. Maybe another collaboration with Dutch artist Melanie Bonajo. We’ll also continue teaching at Werkplaats Typografie (Arnhem). And we probably forgot half of it. 

So yeah – we’ve got some busy months ahead. But first, we need a good summer holiday!

Experimental Jetset: Statement & CounterStatement, 2015

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About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

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Autoreply: Modernism

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By: Metahaven | October 4, 2011

A conversation with Experimental Jetset

If you send an email to Experimental Jetset, the Amsterdam-based graphic design studio founded in 1997 and consisting of Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers, and Danny van den Dungen, you will receive an immediate, automatic reply. In fact, that autoreply is a mini manifesto of more than 1,000 words. An excerpt:

“As we write this, we are approaching the last few days of July. We are currently working on a couple of projects that will occupy all our time and attention—in order to fully concentrate on this, we decided to effectively close down our studio for the full month of August. During that time, we will be checking e-mail only sporadically—and we probably won’t be able to answer e-mails at all. We are very sorry about that. We will return to our usual studio routine in the beginning of September—we will try to answer your mails then. In the meantime, please find below a list with answers to the most common questions. We hope this will help you further.”

While their heroes are modernist designers like Wim Crouwel, they combine this affinity with a DIY punk spirit that they claim has always been part of modernism’s vocabulary. Experimental Jetset is one of the oldest “young” Dutch graphic design studios and by far the most consistent. The trio has worked on projects for Stedelijk Museum CS (SMCS), Purple Institute, Centre Pompidou, Le Cent Quatre (104), De Theatercompagnie, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux (CAPC), Bureau Europa (NAiM), and the Japanese T-shirt labels 2K/Gingham and Publik, among others. In 2007, a large selection of their work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and included in its permanent collection. In contrast with the anonymous technocracy and consultancy of the late-modernist fallout of Total Identity and others, Experimental Jetset, educated at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, has maintained a hands-on and personal approach. The following email conversation took place in the summer of 2011.

Experimental Jetset, “John & Paul & Ringo & George” (2001), T-shirt for 2K/Gingham, Japan.

We are keen on establishing a link between the postwar culture of graphic standardization that produced the Swiss International Style and the post-2000 culture of social networking and communication standards that seems to have replaced mass communication at large, with memes as self-replicating visual genes. We regard your whole approach as a proper meme, as you seem to have created a viable compression of certain modernist tropes that propagate into contemporary visual culture, comment on it, and demarcate a clear position. Your most successful meme seems to be the “&&&” shirts, which have, by imitation, multiplied their presence beyond control. Ultimately, there is a generosity and a significance to this that goes beyond the narrowly defined “graphic design” practice. We are also aware that you regard your visual culture as one governed by material objects. Nevertheless, we would propose that the way you treat these objects, or the way that “visual culture” treats them in turn, is not so much about immaterializing them into virtual objects floating on websites and desktops as it is about taking their essence and then teleporting this to all kinds of other destinations and purposes, much as in Lawrence Weiner’s famous dictum that “You can experience my work by someone telling you about it”—which is, again, nothing else than his version of a meme.

The Swiss International style emerged out of postwar Europe. Univers promoted its own “universal” applicability; Helvetica promoted Switzerland. Helvetica was also the first typeface to be honored with a feature film (which, of course, featured you). You have often noted that despite this tradition of Swiss neutrality, to you there is a more subversive side to modernism. In his article “Graphics Incognito,” Mark Owens establishes a few links between modernism, West Coast punk rock, and principles of anonymity and pseudonymity inherent to underground culture. Could you elaborate on why for you modernism is subversive, and what that subversion consists of?

Then there has been a consistent urge to treat modernism as a style sheet, where it can be separated from its substance—like a Helvetica-styled “identity” can perfectly essentialize a luxury beauty product, an airline, a mediocre sushi-bar franchise, and countless other examples. No doubt part of the “success” of modernism is its lightness, the fact that it can from some perspective be seen as a legitimizer of the entity that it is pasted on. Nevertheless, your treatment of modernism is more concerned with its substance and therefore must at some point have (perhaps violently) confronted the sushi-bar version of the contemporary Helvetica fetish. So what is your position and point of view on modernism’s style versus its substance?

At the time when the most prominent modernist visual tropes came into existence, visual communication meant that an institution or organization broadcasted its information and identity to a constituency of receivers. It seems that today, organizations increasingly seek to redefine the relationship to their audience to the detriment of this sender-receiver duality. Corporate ads now lead viewers to a company’s Facebook profile, soliciting “likes” and gathering visible social capital. There is also an important sense of continuity, in that both the Swiss International Style and Facebook’s sterility provide a powerful means of standardization. The modernist standard had been overriding regional, “vernacular” peculiarities, and Facebook in turn eliminates materiality and realness in the prefab virtual bathroom. Finally, could you give your views on modernism as a standard? How does Experimental Jetset, which maintains an active Facebook profile with many subscribers, look at the continuum and/or break in the use of standards from print to internet and back?

Experimental Jetset

We would first like to say something about our views on modernism as a standard. And before we can do that, we’d like to point out the obvious: the fact that we don’t necessarily see the so-called “International Style” as synonymous with modernism. In our view, the International Style constitutes only a very small part of modernism—and more important, we don’t believe this small part to be exemplary of modernism as a whole.

However, since we grew up in an era in which we experienced a particular Dutch version of the International Style firsthand, we do believe that this very indirect version of the IS is now part of our cultural vocabulary, and as such it became part of our natural graphic language—in a genuinely authentic way, rather than in a contrived, studied manner. Having said that, we like to admit that we never have been particularly inspired by the International Style itself. We have never studied those coffee-table books or grid guides filled with Swiss masters. Our point of reference has always been the particular way in which the International Style has been filtered into Dutch culture. And that is ultimately what interests us most: the way in which a phenomenon such as the International Style has been applied within very different cultur al contexts. There are Dutch versions, Brazilian versions, Italian versions, Japanese versions, “working-class” versions, “middle-class” versions, and so on. Just to give a simple example, we would argue that the way in which Crouwel employed the International Style is typical for a Dutch context, while the way in which Vignelli used that same language shows the sensibilities of an Italian working within a New York context. In other words, it’s all a matter of accents.

It is this “bastardized” version of the International Style that interests us the most (not that the International Style was ever “pure” in the first place). The more removed it becomes from the source (both in place and time), and the more regional and vernacular peculiarities it absorbs, the more interesting it gets. We really love that whole notion of second-, third-, fourth-, or even fifth-generation versions of the International Style.

In other words, what interests us much more than the standard are the variations on that standard. And if “identity” is the way in which a particular object is similar to its own category (which is roughly how Adorno defines identity), then what we are personally interested in is exactly the “non-identity” that exists between the standard and its variation.

A text that we always believed to encapsulate this notion of non-identity really well is Leon Trotsky’s The ABC of Materialist Dialectics (1939), in which he argues that a letter A is never equal to another letter A—it is not even equal to itself.

Experimental Jetset, “The ABC of Materialist Dialectics” poster (2006). Designed for Plexifilm as a fundraiser for Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica documentary. A2-sized, letterpress print.

When we think of the word “standard,” we always think of the way the word is used in the field of music: a blues standard, a jazz standard, a rock standard. What is interesting about standards is the fact that they can be used by every musician as a platform for a certain voice, a certain aesthetic. It is exactly the standard’s inherent “sameness” that becomes a stage for differences. What’s also fascinating about standards is that they belong to everybody; they have an egalitarian, public dimension. We were once at a pop quiz where one of the assignments consisted of a playlist of 20 different versions of “Hey Joe”—the question was to guess the names of the interpreters. We came to fully realize the role of the standard in differentiating between different voices, between different dialects. In other circumstances, it would be impossible to compare Jimi Hendrix and Mink DeVille. We never think in the categories of style and substance. We always preferred the notion of “language”; after all, a language is a system that incorporates both style and substance, both form and content. The idea of a language presupposes a sort of embedded ideology, the weight of history, an inherent narrative dimension—all these notions seem to be missing from the word “style.” We see International “Style” more as a language than a style.

Experimental Jetset, “Two or Three Things I Know About Provo” poster (2011), W139, Amsterdam.

The way a standard relates to its variations is obviously very similar to the way in which a language relates to its accents, its dialects, its different pronunciations, its different spellings, jargons, pidgin versions, and the like. In the same way that there is always a critical distance between the standard and its variation, a dialect can be seen as a way to challenge the cultural hegemony of the standard language (while simultaneously affirming it).

When we brought up the subject of modernism’s subversiveness in the Helvetica documentary, we were specifically thinking about modernism as a dialectical model defined by “deconstructive” tendencies on one side and “constructive” tendencies on the other side. On the one side, there are movements like Dada and surrealism; on the other side, there are movements such as Bauhaus and Constructivism. What makes modernism so interesting, so multifaceted, and ultimately so paradoxical is the fact that between these two poles, all different combinations and variations (of destruction and construction) are possible. (In fact, sometimes these opposite poles can be active within one single person—think of Theo van Doesburg’s role in De Stijl and his interest in Dada.)

We often see punk as a sort of “scale model” of modernism. After all, punk is also a phenomenon defined by deconstructive tendencies on one side (No Future, Destroy) and constructive tendencies on the other (the whole DIY culture). What we were trying to explain in the Helvetica documentary is that we regard modernism in a similar way. However, if you would ask us now to elaborate on the subversiveness of modernism, we would probably start by defining it. For us, modernism has everything to do with the notion of breaking spells, and the ambition to go beyond the chains of illusion. When we say “beyond the chains of illusion,” that is a specific reference to Erich Fromm’s book of the same title, in which he tries to synthesize the languages of Marx and Freud. And in our view, it is exactly in the push and pull between Marx and Freud where modernism can be located. To quote Marx, “The demand to give up illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.” This connects all modernist manifestations. From the most fragmentary surrealist collage to the most grid-based Constructivist composition, and everything in between: They all aim, each in their own way, to go beyond the chains of illusion. In that sense, we believe that every manifestation of modernism is inherently subversive. We believe that even in its most harsh and rigid form, modernism still offers a way out. Even in those rare cases when modernism puts on an unbearable authoritarian face, it still gives the viewer the possibility to completely disagree. It provides a person something to chew on, to work with, to bounce off of. It always demands an active position. Therefore, we even believe that the more corporate outgrowths of late modernism possess a subversive potential.

The idea of Helvetica as a “sushi-bar aesthetic” already seems a few years behind us—in fact, when the documentary came out, the whole idea of Helvetica as a sort of light, lifestyle-based language seemed already on the decline. When you look at that whole retail-and-lifestyle sphere now (fashion chains, for example), you see an aesthetic that is much closer to what some people might perceive as postmodernist: stretched letters, neoclassical centered typography, vernacular irony, moodboardlike imagery. And we’re pretty sure that in a couple of years’ time, it will look completely different again. But hasn’t that always been the case? There are always brief periods of time during which one person’s authentic voice seems indistinguishable from another person’s fad. The only way to distinguish between the two is si mply through time. After awhile, when fashions and trends move on, it’s easy to see who remains true to his/her personal language and who was just in it for more opportunistic reasons. So the “violent confrontation” you talk about is much more like a duration test. Moreover, it’s not as if we have anything to prove, or anything to lose, or anything to win. We just know that our interest in late modernism is completely authentic and that it is grounded in the cultural landscape in which we grew up. It’s not a mask that we can put on and off whenever we feel like it—it is our actual face.

Experimental Jetset, “Antibodies” poster (2010). Designed for NAiM/Bureau Europa. Screenprint, A0-sized.

Metahaven Eh, Facebook?

It is tempting to see the internet as the ultimate fulfillment of the ideals of modernism—after all, the world wide web seems the perfect embodiment of Paul Otlet’s “Mundaneum.” Also, when you look at it from a strictly formalist viewpoint, the whole visual landscape of the internet is made up of exactly those elements that most people seem to associate with International Style: templates, grids, sans-serif type, the specific use of “empty” space, flush-left ragged-right columns. Even the use of all-lowercase letters in text messaging can be seen as stylistically linked to International Style. But still—we would say there is one fundamental, crucial difference between the print culture of modernism and the digital culture of the internet. In our view, print is still a more public medium. If a poster is hanging in the street, it is seen by every passerby in more or less the same way. Sure, the interpretation of the poster will differ from person to person, but by and large, the poster itself will appear in roughly the same way to every viewer, regardless of his/her class, race, gender, age, personal preferences, etc.

This is different on the internet, where websites and pages conform themselves instantly to cater to the personal tastes and preferences of the individual viewer. Google search results change from person to person, the advertisements that clutter online profiles are specifically targeted toward the viewer, etc., etc. This makes the online environment ultimately an individualistic, isolated experience, despite the promise of “being connected.” It also makes most online activity a somewhat unadventurous, undialectical affair, as you only will be confronted with stimuli that are algorithmically curated for you, based on what large corporations (such as Facebook and Google) expect you to want to see. Whereas, within the context of the street, you will be confronted with information that is not specifically intended for you—posters you might not immediately understand, slogans you might disagree with (or not), kiosks carrying newspapers that are not necessarily tailored toward your specific lifestyle, book stalls displaying secondhand books expressing conflicting opinions. In our view, it is this notion of print culture within the urban environment that offers the most dialectical, and therefore most modernist, experience. So it’s exactly that idea that we try to explore most in our work. And, as paradoxical as it may sound, it is this theme of modernist print culture that is also one of the main subjects of our online presence—whether it is our actual website or the Facebook group you mentioned.

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An interview with Experimental Jetset

Jarrett Fuller

Scratching The Surface

I’m not sure Experimental Jetset needs an introduction. The Amsterdam-based design trio consisting of Danny van den Dungen, Erwin Brinkers, and Marieke Stolk have been working since 1997 and are a staple in both history and studio courses. Their work ranges from printed matter to site-specific installations but always retains a recognizable thought process and aesthetic.

I don’t remember when I first came across their work, but it feels like I’ve been a fan of their work for as long as I’ve been a designer. As a Helvetica-loving undergrad student, I was immediately attracted to their blend of Swiss Modernism and punk aesthetics. And as someone interested in design theory, I was equally drawn to the detailed summaries they wrote about their process on their website.

But I found myself really thinking about the studio’s work in a deeper way last summer when I interned at The Whitney Museum of American Art’s in-house design team, between my two years of graduate school. In 2013, as the museum prepared to move to a new location in lower Manhattan, Experimental Jetset was commissioned to rebrand. Their solution — dubbed “the responsive W” — was an innovative and reflexive identity system that, to me, felt completely unexpected and strangely perfect. While spending my days working with the identity during my internship, I picked up their recent monograph, Statement and Counter-Statement in an attempt to better understand their work and methodology. In a review I wrote of the book in August , I said:

It occurs to me that they are one of the few studios we can confidently call auteurs . Flipping through these pages, as projects and quotations blur together, spanning twenty years, a decidedly clear worldview, a consistent practice, emerges. They’ve been able to operate at the fringes of the field, consistently enacting their theories and aesthetics in projects large and small, from small European publishers to large American museums, with equal rigor and authority.

And this is still what’s so interesting to me about Experimental Jetset’s work. Over the last few months, I’ve been emailing back and forth with the trio to talk about their work, the role of writing and theory in their practice, and how they think about the current state of design criticism. I’m thankful for the time they spend considering their answers, which were consistently thoughtful, interesting, and provocative. I’ve enjoyed getting to know them better through these exchanges. I’m honored and excited to include an edited version of our exchanges below in this special text-edition of Scratching the Surface .

Although I’d been following your work for years, it wasn’t until reading Statement and Counter-Statement that I realized how you’d been able to inject your own point of view and visual aesthetic into all your work, regardless of client. Was this a conscious decision?

We’ve always seen graphic design as a legitimate platform for creativity, authorship and self-expression — we’ve never regarded it in any other way.

When we applied to the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, 25 years ago (time does fly), we certainly didn’t go there to become ‘neutral’, ‘objective’, manager-type, business-minded ‘problem-solvers’ — we went there to find a way to express ourselves.

We came from a background of making zines, publishing mini-comics, screenprinting band-shirts, etc. Applying to an art school seemed a logical way to pursue these activities. This was the beginning of the ’90s, when we were still in our early twenties — we just came out of the ’80s, which we spent as teenagers completely immersed in post-punk subcultures (from two-tone ska to hardcore punk, from new wave to garage rock, from psychobilly to trash metal, and everything in-between).

And this ’80s post-punk landscape was incredibly important to us — to kids like us, coming from working-class backgrounds, post-punk had an almost emancipatory effect. Through record sleeves and fanzines, we learned about movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism, and the Situationists — so in that sense, post-punk was our cultural education.

But it was also through post-punk that we got our first taste of authorship, of self-expression. We produced little zines and comics, which we traded through channels such as Maximum Rock & Roll and Factsheet Five — all in all, this was a very formative period for us.

So when we arrived at art school, this whole post-punk period was still very much a part of our outlook. And the Rietveld Academie only made this sense of authorship stronger.

One thing you have to understand about the Rietveld Academie is that it is more or less rooted in movements such as Bauhaus and De Stijl. In fact, the architect of the building, Gerrit Rietveld, was once (in his younger years) a full-fledged member of De Stijl — and although Rietveld had removed himself somewhat from some of his earlier ideas by the time he designed the school, we like to think that the spirit of De Stijl is still very much alive in the building.

In other words — the Rietveld Academie was, during the time we studied there, pretty much dedicated to the synthesis of all arts (and perhaps even more importantly, the synthesis of art and the everyday).

In a practical sense, this meant that there was no distinction made between the arts — there was no hierarchical division. Painting wasn’t seen as a ‘higher’ art than fashion design, for example. The school was completely open and transparent, without any real borders between the departments. In fact, the first year of the school (the ‘Vorkurs’, modelled after the Bauhaus) is a shared year for all students, during which everybody has to study the same principles: model drawing, pinhole photography, etc.

So somehow, our post-punk sense of authorship blended quite naturally with this Bauhaus-style idea of artistic egalitarianism — the idea that every human activity is basically a potential platform for self-expression. (In that sense, a very important text for us is still the founding manifesto of the Bauhaus, from 1919, in which Gropius describes society metaphorically as a building, almost as a cathedral — a Gesamtkunswerk, in which there should be no distinction between the artist and the craftsman).

This may all sound terribly idealistic and utopian — but this idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk was a very real situation for us, while studying at the Rietveld Academie.

To give a very concrete example of this — a lot of the parties and gigs that took place at the squats and venues that we went to, in the early- to mid-’90s, were pretty much collective artworks, put together by art school students and young artists.

There were places like Vrieshuis Amerika and Pakhuis Afrika, squatted warehouses where students and artists had their studios, spaces that were turned into surreal environments — we can still remember a complete Wild West village built in one of these warehouses.

These artist-built environments were used as settings for parties and concerts — events in which everybody was involved. The DJs, the bands, the people taking care of the sound and the light, the people standing behind the bar, the people standing in front of the bar — most of these people were art students, using the event as a platform for self-expression, for individual authorship. But it was precisely this convergence of individual authorship that created this sense of collectivity. Some of our fellow-students even ran a vegetarian restaurant from Vrieshuis Amerika (in fact, it was at this restaurant that we were first introduced to Paul Elliman, who was brought there by Linda van Deursen — this was in the mid-’90s, when Linda was still our teacher).

And of course, graphic design students (such as ourselves) played an important role in that Gesamtkunstwerk as well — by creating flyers for these parties, by producing zines that were distributed during these events, by making shirts for the bands that played. During this period, we actually designed a lot of shirts and record sleeves for this Amsterdam-based punk band NRA (an acronym that didn’t really stood for anything, or stood for Not Really Anything, depending on who you asked).

And we never thought of these flyers, zines, sleeves and shirts as being ‘neutral’, ‘objective’ vessels, for other people’s ideas — it simply didn’t occur to us that people could have such a ‘servile’ approach towards graphic design. To us, this whole idea of post-punk, and of going to art school, was exactly this urge to get away from the feeling of being told what to do, this longing to escape the expectations of our own working-class background.

We certainly weren’t looking for bosses.

So we always saw the work we created around that time as a platform for authorship — as an opportunity to talk about our own influences, our own interests. This was our contribution to the party, to the Gesamtkunstwerk, so to speak.

And we still feel about our work that way. We’ve never seen our work as ‘objective’, or ’neutral’, or ‘functionalist’, or ‘rational’. From the very beginning, our impulse was to express ourselves. We simply don’t know any other way.

Writing all this, we suddenly remember one particular scene, in one of the short-lived squats (if memory serves us well, it was this place called ‘Onder de Bogen’ — a series of arch-shaped studios, situated underneath an Amsterdam railway). We were there one night, basically to keep the space occupied — there wasn’t a party or anything, but the point was to stay in the squat until the next morning, because there were rumors the space would be evacuated at dawn. And as long as there would be a few people in the space, and some furniture, the squat couldn’t be simply evacuated. At that time, there was a law stating that when a space looked inhabited, the cops would need a special permit to enter the space — so the strategy was always to keep the space occupied, at all times.

Anyway, while we were going through that long and freezing night, there was also another person in the space: a solemn artist, silently working on a giant disco/mirror/glitter ball — an enormous piece he was creating for an upcoming party, in another squat. There couldn’t have been a bigger contrast between that outrageous glitter ball, and the gloominess of that night.

So you could ask yourself — what exactly was that guy creating? A sculpture? A piece of interior design? A theatrical prop? A political statement? A manifestation of self-expression? A gesture of servitude? Who actually cares?

In the end, it might all turn out to have been nothing but a therapeutic activity — something to keep your mind distracted from the fact that the cops will sooner or later show up, to evacuate the place, and tear down the Gesamtkunstwerk. But until that time, you might as well keep working on that glitter ball, and try to make it as big as possible.

Because I interned at the Whitney this past summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about the responsive W. By responding to the surface, the W makes the viewer — and the design itself — aware of its edges. It’s almost like the design is conscious of being a piece of design (I think?). I think in this sense, it could be read as a critique of its surface, or even a critique of logos/branding in general. Thinking about this and the idea of authorship, I’m curious how you think about your work as a critical activity?

In fact, your interpretation of the critical dimension of the Responsive W feels completely relevant to us — it is very close to our own intentions.

We do see our work as a critical activity — but this notion of criticality is completely integrated in our way of working, and in our general outlook. It’s not the sort of criticality that can be measured in a simplistic “critical of what?” way.

And it certainly has nothing to do with the notion of criticism as ‘calling out’ or attacking fellow-designers — you can go through all the writings on our website (and it is a disturbing amount of text, we agree), but you won’t find any negative remarks about other designers. We simply have too much of a sense of solidarity for that. (In the end, we’re old-fashioned social-democrats — we feel that we, as workers, should keep a closed front towards outside forces trying to divide us internally).

But having said that — we do think that our work is driven more by negative impulses than positive impulses. We don’t design because we ‘love’ type, or ‘love’ paper, or ‘love’ the smell of ink. We know some other designers can talk for hours about their passion for certain typefaces, or certain bindings, or certain sorts of paper — but we don’t really have that.

We always have the feeling that we’re designing AGAINST something — a certain visual landscape, or a certain mode of representation, that we want to question through our way of working.

We already wrote a lot on this subject, so we won’t repeat it in full — but in short: in our work, we try to go against a visual culture that is focused on images, on representations, on projections. It’s a very classic (by now almost cliché) ‘Debordian’ position we try to uphold here — this idea of going against ‘the spectacle’ and its alienating effects. Or better yet — the idea of finding a way to somehow exist within the spectacle, and going against the spectacle, at the same time.

By referring, in our work, to all sorts of possible material gestures (overprinting, folding, perforating, tearing, self-referentiality, etc.), we try to make the viewer/reader aware that he/she is (first of all) looking at a printed, material object — an object that is made by humans, and thus also can be changed by humans.

So that’s our own (perhaps quite naive) attempt to go against the alienation of dominant modes of representation.

In the case of the Whitney, it was exactly a dominant way of representation that we wanted to question. And the current dominant way of institutional graphic representation is really to show a full-colour reproduction of the artwork on the poster, giving the viewer the feeling to have experienced the artwork just by looking at that poster — something we feel is very ‘false’, in a way. But of course, the Whitney expected us to come up with such a solution nonetheless — in other words, we had to use the full-colour reproduction, there was no way around it.

So we were thinking — if this poster really should be a mirror, just reproducing an existing artwork — maybe we should make people aware that they are indeed looking at a mirror. And what better way to do this than by cracking the mirror? So this is exactly what we did — the W-shaped line is literally a crack on the surface of the poster.

Brecht once said that art shouldn’t be a mirror, but a hammer — and in the case of the graphic identity of the Whitney, we took the hammer to the mirror. Or at least, we tried.

One of things that’s interesting (and unique) about your website are your extensive descriptions about your projects. (Again, I’m thinking about the great writing you have around the Whitney redesign.) What place does writing have in your design process and how does writing these descriptions influence your design practice?

When in the process do you start writing those? Is it at the end for the website or are you continually writing and rewriting about your work (for clients, for yourself, for your website, etc)?

These are just some loose, almost random notes we just penned down, on the subject of writing:

I We actually don’t really distinguish between writing and sketching — so writing certainly plays an important role in our design process. People sometimes say that a picture is worth a thousand words — but we sometimes feel the opposite is the case. Some ideas are simply better expressed in words than in pictures.

II As for the texts on our website: they do serve to explain our projects, but not necessarily to others. We mainly use these texts as a way to explain the work to ourselves. It’s a form of self-reflection that has been very helpful to us, and it takes place before, during and after the design process. Like we said, it’s really an integral part of the process itself — it’s like having a constant dialogue with ourselves.

But we sometimes doubt whether these texts are really helpful to others — if anything, they rather complicate our projects than clarify them. Also, we noticed we have become very vulnerable by publishing these texts online — we’re a very easy target for critics.

III A while ago, one of our Werkplaats Typografie students (Christof Nüssli, to be precise) pointed us to a very helpful text by Thomas Hirschhorn, titled ‘Why do I write about my work?’.

It’s a text that really resonates with us, and we agree with many of Hirschhorn’s points.

IV. One thing that you should keep in mind though — writing doesn’t come naturally to us. We don’t come from an academic background, and we fully realize that our skills are totally insufficient. We always feel like imposters — as writers, as designers, as lecturers, as teachers.

Fact is — other than the name suggests, the Rietveld Academie is not an academy in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the word — it isn’t a university, or a place that gives you an academic degree. It is basically a trade school — it’s the sort of education that in the Netherlands is called ‘beroepsonderwijs’, training you to be a skilled manual worker, like a plumber or a carpenter. We’re not complaining (far from that), and we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way — we’re secretly quite happy with the ‘anti-theoretical’ streak within the Rietveld Academie. But we just want to make the point that we aren’t natural-born writers, or proper intellectuals, or real academics. We’re just designers who happen to write — nothing more, nothing less.

Having said that — we do feel that writing enables us (sometimes even more so than drawing, or talking) to think in a more elastic way. Through words, you can forge unexpected connections — things that go against the ‘common sense’ of the verbal.

As we already said, we aren’t proper intellectuals — as people with a non-academic background, a lot of scholarly texts look quite impenetrable to us. But it is exactly the fact that these texts seem so alien to us that also makes them so magical to us.

We have to admit we quite like the deep, shadowy, opaque jargon of cultural critique, of existentialist philosophy, of post-marxist essays. In our eyes, these texts are like gnostic spells, enabling the user to make strings of associations that seem totally impossible, and arrive at conclusions that are almost otherworldly. There’s a mantra-ish, lyrical/poetical quality to a lot of these tracts: the negation of the negation, paradoxes and dialectics, searching for the essence of words by looking at their etymology, the notion of the stream-of-consciousness, strings of associations, and all this other wordplay… We really love that whole dynamic of dialectical thinking, and wished we somehow had the skills to incorporate that in our own writing — but we simply haven’t.

V. On top of that, there’s the language difference — we aren’t native English speakers, which means that we have a strange relationship with the texts we write anyway. In fact, we could never write a text like this paragraph in Dutch — it’s the use of English that forces us (or better said, allows us) into a certain way of reasoning, a certain way of letting words rhyme and chime with each other. In Dutch, we would write and reason in a completely different way, and thus arrive at totally different conclusions.

Something that’s interesting to me about reading interviews you’ve previously done, or even reading Statement and Counter-Statement , is how you talk just as much about theorists and writers (Walter Benjamin, Marx, etc) as you do designers (Wim Crouwel, etc). How do theory and history influence your work? Do you see ways that these writers’ work manifests itself in your visual work?

A while ago (in 2013, to be precise) we were asked a very similar question, for a different interview — and the reply we gave then would really answer your question as well. So we couldn’t resist just repeating it here.

In that interview, we were asked about the way in which our “philosophical approach” has informed our graphic design practice.

And we answered that it is actually more the other way around — it is our graphic design practice that has informed (and keeps informing) our ‘philosophical’ approach (if you can call it that).

As we already explained elsewhere in this interview, we actually don’t have a proper theoretical or academic background — it really is through our daily practice that we keep coming across all these (more or less) theoretical concepts (and then we piece them together, in a rather primitive, haphazard way — we’re theory savages rather than theory-savvy, we have to admit).

For example, in 2007 we were working on the graphic identity of Le Cent Quatre (104), a French cultural institute that was situated in a large, roofed street — basically a passage , or arcade . Doing research for this project, we automatically came across Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project — which immediately had a huge impact on our way of working and thinking, and keeps on inspiring us ever since.

A similar thing happened when we were working on the graphic identity of the Whitney. Thinking about instructions and notations, we remembered an essay by the Welsh, New Left scholar Raymond Williams, in which he basically defines art as a form of notation. And this idea (of art-as-notation) then immediately became part of the design process, amplifying ideas we already had, but were (until then) unable to articulate.

I’m curious about how you think about design criticism. How do you feel about the current dialogue around graphic design? What issues or topics would you like to see more designers talking/writing about?

We have always been criticized publicly — already since the moment we graduated.

In 1997, we redesigned a pop-cultural Dutch magazine called Blvd. (a redesign that also doubled as our graduation project), and this project was harshly criticized — not only in Dutch design magazines, but also in national newspapers. We were baptized by fire — which also had a certain liberating effect; from that moment on, we felt we had absolutely nothing to lose. This really set the tone for the rest of our career (if you can call it a career) — and we’ve been drip-fed with a steady stream of heavy criticism ever since. It’s safe to say we aren’t exactly the critics’ favorites — to put it very, very mildly. But again — to us, this overall critical dismissal has always felt more like blessing than a curse, as paradoxical as it may sound. The fact that we’ve never recognized ourselves in the words of the critics forced us to come up with our own words to describe our work, so to speak.

In other words, we are wondering if we are the right persons to address the theme of design criticism — we feel we are already too biased.

Having said that — recently, we’ve been thinking a lot about the subject of criticism (while trying to keep our own personal experiences out of it). We do feel there is something ‘awkward’ about the notion of graphic design criticism (as opposed to art criticism, music criticism, film criticism, etc.) — and call us crazy, but we do think that some of that awkwardness might have something to do with class. Bear with us as we talk you through our own little theory:

Somehow, the discipline of graphic design grew out of the printing industry — so it has certain working-class roots (keep in mind that we are talking here about the history of graphic design as a discipline, not about the background of individual graphic designers).

In fact, printing is not only deeply connected to the notion of labour, but also to the labour movement (think of Régis Debray, who described these links so eloquently in ‘Socialism and Print’, an essay which appeared in issue 46 of New Left Review — it can be found online under the title ‘Socialism: A Life-Cycle’). In this regard, it’s interesting to note (although not mentioned by Debray) that the first labour union in the Netherlands was in fact the union of typographers.

So it’s fair to say that printing and labour are intrinsically linked — and graphic design, which grew out of the printing industry, still shares this background. Sure, graphic design underwent a certain social upwards mobility, emancipating itself from the printing press, gaining some sort of social-economic and artistic autonomy — but in the end, graphic designers are still the sons and daughters of the printing press.

The discipline of criticism, in its present-day form, grew out of a totally different background — a much more bourgeois tradition (again, keep in mind that we are talking here about criticism as a literary genre, not about the background of individual critics). Oxbridge-educated criticasters, discussing books, music, morals and ethics in the columns of 19th century newspapers, redefining a new sort of etiquette for the aristocratic classes in a rapidly changing, modernizing world. What to do, how to behave, what books to read, what music to listen to, etc. And on top of that, there was the polemic as an extension of gentlemanly dueling — a last remainder of this whole idea of the nobility.

In that sense, criticism is basically the bourgeoisie reflecting on itself (sometimes through the mirror of bohemia), in order to constantly correct itself.

Fast-forward a century or so, and both graphic design and criticism seem completely disconnected from their roots, their original backgrounds — nowadays, both disciplines inhabit more or less the same cultural stratosphere. And yet, it is our belief that somewhere, deep in the ‘collective subconsciousness’ of these disciplines, there are still traces left of their respective histories.

Critics (even graphic designers acting as critics) often place themselves above designers, taking on the role of cultural ‘gate-keepers’ — trying to dictate, to these masses of ‘ordinary graphic designers’, a certain canon, a certain etiquette.

The idea is still that graphic designers can’t really think for themselves — that they’ll always need critics, more educated people, to somehow think for them. Graphic designers should be told what to read, how to act, how to think, how to write. Critics will never grow tired of subtly reminding us that graphic design, as a discipline in itself, is still a bit dumb, a bit incorrect, a bit tainted, a bit dirty — dirty as the hands of a printer.

So, in our view, the awkwardness of graphic design criticism (or at last, the awkwardness that we ourselves experience when we read design criticism — as opposed, for example, to the joy that we experience when reading music criticism) has a lot to doth with these class dynamics. We often recognize, in the patronizing tone of the critic, faint echoes of the voice of the boss (the ‘patron’ in ‘patronizing’), the judge, the aristocrat, the clergyman. We just can’t help it.

As we said — call us crazy. We realize that this is a total crackpot theory. People will ridicule us for it. Also, we realize this is all a bit unfair and harsh towards some of our friends, who are working very hard to put design criticism on the map.

But still, we do believe there is a grain of truth in it

Scratching the Surface is a design podcast about the intersection of criticism and practice hosted by Jarrett Fuller . Each week, Jarrett interviews designers, writers, critics, educators and those that operate between these fields about how writing, criticism, and theory informs individual practice and the graphic design profession at large.

Written by Jarrett Fuller

Designing/Writing. Hosts @surfacepodcast. Teaches @prattgradcomd, @parsons_bfacd & @UArts. Loves @eurryplot. Previously @facebook, @warbyparker, @whitneymuseum.

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Experimental Jetset

Experimental Jetset play it straight. In staging their retrospective ’10 Years of Posters’ the Dutch graphic design group (Erwin Brinkers, Marieke Stolk and Danny van Dungen) adhered scrupulously to the unwritten code dictating how graphics should be shown in galleries. Their exhibition consists of 79 posters hung over three densely packed walls. Binder-clipped at the corners and hooked over transparent-topped drawing pins, they appear fresh-faced and informal. This mode of presentation allows them to teeter between the categories of useful object and discreet, contemplative image. It is an unassuming display in that it makes no great claims for the value of the posters in either sense.

Not only do they play their exhibitions straight; Experimental Jetset also produce design that conforms to the most stringent of graphic diktats. Using the typeface Helvetica (varied with the odd sprinkling of Univers), keeping to standard formats such as the A4 paper size and tucking their type and image into well-constructed grids, they create graphic compositions that would have satisfied the strictest of 1960s’ corporate Modernists. In the post-desktop publishing environment, where the rules of graphic design have been kicked around by professional and amateur alike, Experimental Jetset’s conformity has become a quirk. It is a trait that many fellow designers interpret as ironic – a cynical take on a more optimistic era.

But of course none of this – neither the direct style of display nor the Modernist graphic foibles – is as straight as it appears. On the most basic level Experimental Jetset does not have a decade of work behind it. The group formed in Amsterdam in 1997 and they have fudged the dates by including some of their 1996 student projects from the Rietveld Academy. In a similar vein, they are not poster designers as such. Unlike the masters of the art, designers from early 20th-century France or mid-century Eastern Europe, they do not consider the design of posters to be a freestanding public art. Rather, these designs are part of larger graphic systems: on the exhibition press release they are described as ‘by-products’.

More significantly, Experimental Jetset’s conformity to Modernist strictures is neither wholly in earnest nor a mockery; it is a considered acceptance. Modernist graphic designers failed in their own terms – however clean and well made a graphic form may be, it can never float free of cultural, social and economic associations – but they succeeded in founding a potent graphic tradition, particularly in northern Europe. Experimental Jetset choose to stick with this tradition, justifying their use of Helvetica with the claim that ‘late Modernism is the folk art of the Netherlands’. Of course, tradition is exactly what Experimental Jetset’s role models despised, and the group’s regard for their work may be an unwanted consolation prize, but that does not alter the sincerity of their admiration.

For anyone outside the graphic design community these arguments probably read like tortured formulations around a simple exhibition of good-looking, intelligent graphics. They would have a point. Experimental Jetset’s posters are so clever and formally resolved, who cares what the Helvetica-haters think (a surprisingly vehement breed, mostly consisting of American designers who believed they had slain the typeface once and for all two decades ago)? I particularly like a set of three posters designed for the Terminal Five show – the 2005 New York exhibition held in the Saarinen-designed TWA terminal at JFK airport, which is largely remembered for its runway-storming private view. Matching sweeping statements from Filippo Marinetti, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Theo van Doesburg with grainy, beautifully cropped photographs of aircraft, they manage the seemingly impossible combination of being both exhilarating and anachronistic. Originally posted on the streets of New York, they were intended to look like adverts for a non-existent airline. Once in the gallery, their typographic rhythm appears less corporate than elegiac. Other notable projects include the extended identity for the Stedelijk Museum’s temporary premises in a former mail-sorting office near Central Station – a playful meeting between the graphics of the museum and those of the Post Office – and their map-shaped Rorschach ink-blots designed for the 2004 Dutch entry to the Venice Biennale, ‘We Are the World’.

Standing within the graphic-lined walls of Experimental Jetset’s exhibition, although struck by the elegance of their output, I began to question just how minimal their visual vocabulary need be. Not only do they regulate their typefaces and their formats, but even their colours are limited almost exclusively to black, white, blue and red. Their asceticism seems to have increased with the passing years, with the odd splash of orange or turquoise that may have appeared in the late 1990s being expunged by the turn of the millennium. As their work stands, they run the risk of making Wim Crouwel – the most hardline late Modernist of them all – look like M/M, the French design team fêted for its flourishes. If this kind of self-restriction has an end-point, what is it? And if it doesn’t, where does it lead? These questions aren’t meant as criticisms: I am genuinely curious. What happens next?

Emily King is a London-based writer and curator with a specialism in design.

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Notes on Experimental Jetset

This is why Experimental Jetset is a living part of typographic history

Some upcoming events. First of all, we’re working on a ‘graphic intervention’ for an exhibition that will take place at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich – the opening will take place on April 16, 2015. Secondly, we designed five Provo-related posters as a contribution to Yes Yes Yes, a group show that will open on April 18, at Colli in Rome. And finally, around May 1, the Whitney Museum will re-open at its new location – featuring a graphic identity that we designed in 2012 (and that has been maintained by the Whitney’s in-house design team ever since). In fact, on the occasion of the opening, we’ve been asked to create some new work for the Whitney – more about that later.” This is just one of the many updates Experimental Jetset posted on their website regarding their agenda for the first half of 2015 and obviously productivity is not something this team of three lacks in.

Consisting of Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen this small, independent, Amsterdam-based graphic design studio was established back in 1997. The trio, who met and collaborated during their studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy formed Experimental Jetset and since the beginning of their adventures in the world of the letters, they decided to focus on printed matter and site-specific installations. Best known for their typographic solutions have completed projects as diverse as the new graphic identity for the Whitney Museum of American Art (2013), to the iconic ‘ John & Paul & Ringo & George ’ t-shirt print (2001).

“We want our work to become a part of reality, not an imitation of it”

Although they describe their work as “scavenging the ruins of Modernism ”, Experimental Jetset’s graphic design output belongs to our times. Conscious “of its origins and place in design history” they see their work as an archive of influences. From the iconic poster by Dutch cartoon artist Bernard Willem Holtrop with a reversed lower case “A” that inspired the trio for its “sharp and clear design but contrarian element”, through the No Wave post-punk sub-culture that sprung up in New York City in the late 1970s and early 80s to the relationship between pop culture and the avant-garde – exemplified, for example, by the record sleeve of The Beatles’ White Album  designed by pop artist Richard Hamilton in 1968, everything is an inspiration.

“For us, a fascination with graphic design started with stuff like record sleeves, music magazines, fanzines and band t-shirts”, says Van den Dungen. “That got us interested in graphic design in the first place and I think a lot of the work that we do is still related to that. There is always this sense that we referring to those groups or movements.” Provo was just one of them. The Dutch counterculture movement, which Stolk’s father was a founding member of was focused on provoking violent responses from authorities using non-violent action and it was a family issue for her. After all, “since mainstream printers did not want to print the subversive material of the movement, activism forced her father to become a printer.” 

Although they have become synonymous with the use of Helvetica, Stolk wants to set the record straight. “We actually hate Helvetica”, she says.

Owing a huge debt to Dutch graphic designers such as Wim Crouwel and other influential thinkers and visual disruptors alike (French Marxist theorist Guy Debord, Italian artist Lucio Fontana, French film director Jean-Luc Godard or Stanley Kubrick’s “relentless merciless aesthetic”), Experimental Jetset are not interested in reproducing reality. “We want our work to become a part of reality, not an imitation of it” they say. “We try to make the viewer aware of the reality of representation by revealing the methods of reproduction and of printing”.

Obsessed with details, with an almost “neurotic desire to control even the smallest elements in our work for better or for worse” Experimental Jetset porftolio is influenced by their involvement as teenagers in the 1980s with the “post-punk sub-cultures such as New Wave, Psychobilly, 2 Tone and Mod”, notes Brinkers. And although they have become synonymous with the use of Helvetica typeface Stolk wants to set the record straight. “We actually hate Helvetica”, she says. “If anything we see it as more of a natural tone of voice as part of our everyday vocabulary. We are not the sort of actors who speak in a different voice or put on another mask every time we play another role”, she explains. “We basically signed our own death sentence – in Helvetica obviously!” she commented on their appearance in Gary Hustwit’s documentary about the over popular font. Maybe the fact that the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired back in 2007 a large selection of their work in 2007 for inclusion in the museum’s permanent collection will make you acknowledge that Experimental Jetset are a living part of today’s typographic history but that is merely an understatement.

Tags/ inspiration , modernism , moma , stanley kubrick , experimental jetset , marieke stolk , erwin brinkers , danny van den dungen , dutch , whitney museum , museum für gestaltung , jean-luc godard , the beatles

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Experimental Jetset: Past Plus Future Equals Now (On the Act of Referring to the Past as a Modernist Gesture)

If we should believe the critics, a crisis is haunting design, and at the core of this imaginary crisis is the idée-fixe that design’s current preoccupation with its own past is somehow a symptom of its inability to formulate the future. In addition to this, these critics 

often mention modernism as an example of a movement that contrasts sharply with this current situation, thereby defining modernism as a movement primarily concerned with the future. We couldn’t disagree more.

01. The notion of modernism as a movement concerned only with the future is, in our view, a malicious caricature. To us, modernism is first of all a dialectical system: an attempt to synthesize seemingly opposite elements. Modernism is the constant struggle to unite theory and practice, the sublime (art) and the everyday (design), creation and destruction, production and consumption, autonomy and engagement, asymmetry and balance, the abstract and the concrete, time and space; and more relevant in the context of this specific text, the attempt to unite past and future. In this regard, it’s interesting to mention that etymologically, the word ‘modernism’ does not come from the word ‘new’: in Latin, ‘modernus’ simply means ‘now’ or ‘the time of now’. And what better way to see the now as a synthesis of the old and the new, as a surface where the past and the future touch? In other words, the notion of modernism, through its roots in the concept of the ‘now’, embraces the past as much as the future.

Which leads us to the following question: what exactly is the origin of this caricature of modernism, this one-dimensional image of modernism as a movement blindly following the future? Personally, we blame postmodern critics. (But then again, we blame virtually everything on postmodern critics, from bad weather to bird flu). Another possible explanation can be found in the conclusion of Rayner Banham’s ‘Theory and Design in the First Machine Age’ (1960), in which Banham actually blames the misrepresentation of modernism on late-modernist designers themselves. (Loosely interpreted, in that chapter Banham criticizes the tendency of late-modernists to focus solely on matters such as functionalism and utilitarianism, a tendency that dismisses the dialectical and conceptual dimensions of early-modernism).

02. Maybe this is a good moment to give some very random examples (off the top of our heads) of how the past is being referred to in modernism. For instance, the Bauhaus’ preoccupation with geometric forms such as the triangle, the square and the circle had nothing to do with the fact that these forms were in any way futuristic, or ergonomic, or mechanical appropriate; because they simply weren’t. Indeed, for the Bauhaus, these forms were highly symbolic, referring to classic Greek ideas, and to the ancient mystique of mathematics. (A similar example of a modernism referring to ancient mysticism would be De Stijl’s preoccupation with matters such as antroposophy and theosophy). Or take for example Duchamp’s ‘LHOOQ’ (1919), turning the Mona Lisa into an icon of Dada; a clear example of a modernist work referring to the past. (In his turn, Salvador Dali referred to ‘LHOOQ’ in his ‘Self Portrait as Mona Lisa’). Referring to a more recent past are Kurt Schwitters’ ‘Merz’ collages, compositions of found printed matter, showing newspapers from yesterday next to tickets from just hours ago.

But maybe the best examples of the historical dimension of modernism can be found in the work of Marx and Freud, in many ways the founding fathers of modernism as we know it. Marx, who refers in his writings extensively to German thinkers such as Hegel and Feuerbach, and Freud, whose theories were profoundly influenced by Greek mythology (Eros, Thanatos, Oedipus).

In other words, if we can define modernism as a dialectical system shaped by Bauhaus, De Stijl, Dada, Surrealism, Marx and Freud (and we actually don’t think it can be defined in any other way), then we think it’s safe to say that the practice of referring to the past is an integral part of modernism.

03. We could even look at the Renaissance, which is the archetypical model of a synthesis of past and future. The Renaissance is a prime example of a period in which progression would have been impossible without a strong interest in the past. While the Middle Ages, a period obsessed with the future in its most extreme form (the afterlife), was a period of extreme stagnation, the Renaissance, a concept built completely around the reinterpretation of classical values, proved to be one of the most revolutionary and progressive forces in history.

Another model of such a synthesis was punk. Punk was in many ways a pivotal point in pop culture, introducing a generation of musicians, designers and artists to concepts such as Do-It-Yourself, independent labels, fanzine culture, and so forth. But intrinsically linked to all these progressive forces was the music itself, which was formally nothing more (but certainly nothing less) than a return to the three-minutes rock & roll idiom of artists such as Chuck Berry. Here, as with the Renaissance, it were precisely old forms that enabled new ideas to take shape. (And the very moment that new ideas are expressed through old forms, the forms themselves become new, which we see most clearly in the transformation from punk to post-punk/new-wave).

While we’re at it, we might as well take a look at an even more pivotal point in pop culture, The Beatles. Generally understood to be one of the most revolutionary forces in the Sixties, the music of The Beatles was fully based on black rhythm & blues, music that had been around for literally decades before The Beatles even were born. (The Beatles actually never betrayed these influences: as late as 1973, Chuck Berry sued Lennon over the composition of ‘Come Together’ (1969), which was basically a rip-off of Berry’s ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ (1955). Lennon admitted, and the case was settled out of court). In addition to this, it’s interesting to see that the more progressive and inventive the music of The Beatles became, the more their musical interests moved from the recent past to the distant past. While the early Beatles were concerned with rhythm & blues only, the later (‘Sergeant Pepper’-era) Beatles were profoundly inspired by matters such as the 19th century operas of Gilbert & Sullivan, and vintage Vaudeville.

04. Modernism, the Renaissance, punk, The Beatles. Four very different models that show us (all in their own specific way) that the practice of referring to the past does not exclude a movement towards the future. Indeed, they show us that the practice of referring to the past is in fact a necessary part of such a movement; maybe even the most important part. So why this tendency amongst contemporary critics to scream ‘retro’, ‘neo-‘ or ‘post-‘ when confronted with references to the past in the work of contemporary artists and designers? And why is it that, in academic writing, it is completely accepted to make extensive use of quotes and citations, while the use of quotes in design and art is often dismissed as mere postmodern irony?

A possible answer could be the total lack of dialectical imagination among contemporary design critics, but that would be almost too easy (although for a part certainly true). We suspect another, more underlying motive (although this remains wild speculation). As with most conflicts, we wouldn’t be surprised if this bitter argument between critics and designers is in fact a disguised class conflict. It’s no wonder that these critics claim a monopoly on history; it is in fact their intellectual capital. It is in their best interest to keep history locked in a mythical state of ‘once-upon-a-time’, and to prevent it from being absorbed into design practice, i.e., the living tradition of the everyday.

To free history from its condition as intellectual property owned by a small class of reactionary academics, and to use it as a constructive force, as the building blocks of the now; we don’t only think this is our right as designers, in our view, it is even our duty.

Originally published 16 October 2005 Now & Again Exhibition | Utrecht Manifest

www.experimentaljetset.nl

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Why everything starts with Helvetica for Experimental Jetset

The reclusive, obsessive Dutch trio discuss how the neutral typeface has paradoxically come to define them.

The clean lines, monochrome colour palette and Helvetica-flavoured simplicity of Experimental Jetset 's body of graphic design work can be deceptive. For beneath every bold geometric shape and clever twist of wordplay you'll find a rich layer of thought-provoking concepts and often obscure cultural touchpoints that reward further exploration.

In some cases, these references are subtle enough to be missed by all but the most attentive of viewers, and require some level of explanation - and the studio often delves into these things in a great deal of depth through fascinating essay-like write-ups on its website. But these are always about the work, and all too rarely about the people behind it.

Experimental Jetset comprises Danny van den Dungen, Marieke Stolk and Erwin Brinkers - but unless you're fortunate enough to catch the trio face-to-face, it's rare that an individual voice breaks from the collective. Emails are signed either with all three names, or simply 'EJ'. Fortunately, Computer Arts had the chance to sit down with Van den Dungen, Stolk and Brinkers at the end of February, following an engaging talk at Design Indaba about their creative influences.

Before we even start, Stolk ponders: "Would it not be easier to do this via email?" She's concerned that they may come across as too abrupt: after all, the trio like to put almost as much thought into their responses as they do their work.

Pack mentality

We're sitting on a balcony outside the conference venue; Van den Dungen's girlfriend joins us briefly, bringing a couple of plates of buffet salad. As the trio tuck in, they begin to relax and we begin by discussing how the three of them function as a unit.

"We try to do everything collaboratively," asserts Brinkers. "We tend to work on the same thing as much as possible, because we think we're really a unit of graphic designers, rather than three separate ones." Although not a football fan, unlike many of his compatriots, Van den Dungen reaches for a familiar Dutch sporting metaphor to continue Brinkers' theme: "We sometimes compare it to Total Football," he grins. "We once saw an interview with Johan Cruyff, where he was explaining this system where every player is able to play each other's role. That's something we aspire to."

Experimental Jetset's Amsterdam-based studio is around 70 square metres; small enough to be intimate but large enough to keep the trio - who have been working together for 17 years, since studying together at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie - from treading on each other's toes. "If we were a studio in New York, we'd probably have 20 square metres," Stolk points out. "It's really all a question of context. For me, it's not the amount of space we have but the amount of time we've been working together that's more worrying."

Certainly it helps to explain how three independent minds can function with such a unified sense of purpose. "Everybody does have different interests," insists Van den Dungen. "It's not that we're three versions of the same designer, it's more like we're different aspects of the same designer maybe. Everybody brings something else to the table." Perhaps the emails being signed 'EJ' acknowledge the studio almost as a fourth personality, greater than the sum of its parts? "Sometimes you look at work as if you were not the one that made it," confirms Stolk.

"Because we create it with all three of us, it's like this other entity. Not that we don't feel responsible, of course - we put our names on it, after all - but it's still all three of our names," she continues. "It's quite abstract, and I think that's quite pleasant."

Obsession by design

The three designers are influenced by the music of The Beatles and The Jam, as well as the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Stanley Kubrick - with whom Experimental Jetset shares an obsessive attention to detail. We move on to discuss how that perfectionism manifests itself.

"During the [Design Indaba] lectures there was a lot of talk about mistakes, which is something that we're also interested in," considers Van den Dungen. "At the same time, we think that mistakes only exist if you try to achieve perfection." Brinkers interjects: "If making mistakes is your goal, it's not a mistake anymore," he reasons. "That tragedy of failure is only beautiful if you strive for that idea of perfection. There's something about that struggle of trying to achieve something, when you know you will never get there."

Besides Kubrick, there's another cinematic reference point that can be found woven throughout the studio's body of work - the 1966 film Blow Up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. "It's a film about art, memory, photography, music, film, design and life itself," Van den Dungen explains. "The movie also hints at the existential void, the terrifying nothingness."

Of course, compared to the likes of Kubrick or The Beatles, references to Antonioni could pass the average viewer by. Perhaps in some cases, these allusions are as much for the trio's own personal satisfaction as anything else? "Yes," confirms Stolk with a wry smile, leaving Van den Dungen to elaborate.

"We like to compare it to a meal," he explains. "Sometimes you don't know the exact ingredients, but you can still taste them. Even if you don't exactly get the reference, you can understand that it's rooted in something."

Another obscure influence from the 1960s is the Brazilian artistic movement Tropicália. Anyone curious to know more about such things can indulge in some of the explanations on the Experimental Jetset website, or "long, winding, boring stories" as Van den Dungen mischievously calls them. But these layers of allusions aren't about self-indulgence: "It's not like we just add in those references. You need them to create the work," he insists. "It's not some kind of superfluous layer on top of it, we cannot get it out."

Indeed, in some cases the references are themselves the subject of the work - as was the case for the 2003 poster Zang! Tumb Tumb, which remixed John Lennon and Yoko Ono's War Is Over poster using the onomatopoeic words of the Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, intended to evoke the sound of falling bombs.

Binding all of these layers together is the visual style of Dutch modernism, which surrounded all three designers during their formative years, and which colours everything their studio creates. Or, more accurately, removes colour from it, in favour of stark black sans-serif type on pure white. "It's our language," shrugs Brinkers. "It's what you say with it that matters."

So rooted is Experimental Jetset's signature style in the graphic language of the studio's forebears, particularly the great Wim Crouwel, that some reactions have been negative. "Since the beginning of our career we've been criticised - ridiculed, even - by a lot of people who see us as a nostalgic, almost retro thing," confesses Van den Dungen. "But we were brought up in this language, and we have a certain right to do our own thing with it."

Tasked in 2004 with creating a graphic identity for the Stedelijk Museum's temporary location in Amsterdam, for instance, Experimental Jetset made reference to Crouwel's 'SM' logo, but also used an Airmail pattern to allude to the venue's former use as a Dutch Post distribution centre.

"We wanted to refer explicitly to those two social democratic institutions - historically two of the most important commissioners of design in the Netherlands - and also react to the fact that both of them at the time were in the process of being privatised."

Deceptive neutrality

Ironically, one of the most distinctive features of the graphic palette with which the studio paints is a typeface famed for its neutrality, and that the trio selected because they wanted the conversation to be about the idea, not the font in which it's set. Of course, being interviewed for a documentary about everyone's favourite Swiss sans serif can't have helped.

"Helvetica is our starting point; it's like a blank piece of paper," reflects Brinkers. Stolk goes on to explain how, when the three of them graduated in 1997, typefaces were beginning to proliferate and distract designers from the concept at hand, a phenomenon they were keen to avoid.

"The paradox is really interesting," muses Van den Dungen. "It's like an architect using a really standardised, pre-fab element, and still trying to make it their own. If it's your handwriting, but at the same time it's used by millions of companies all over the world, then what exactly is it that's your handwriting?"

The potential social and political influence of design fascinates Experimental Jetset as much as its cultural value - although, this tends to translate into a particular aesthetic, packed with layers for viewers to unpack, rather than being more campaign-driven.

"Some graphic designers want to provide answers, and some really want to ask questions," muses Brinkers, setting up Stolk's closing thoughts nicely. "Interpretation is very important," she adds. "We try to leave things open for other people to fill in. We don't want to tell people what to think, but we do want to encourage them to think."

This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 227.

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Trailer: Experimental Jetset on scavenging the ruins of Modernism

Related Profile

They might describe their work as “scavenging the ruins of Modernism” but Experimental Jetset’s graphic design output is neither dated nor derivative. It is simply conscious of its origins and place in design history. The Dutch studio’s members – Danny van den Dungen, Erwin Brinkers and Marieke Stolk – see their work as an archive of influences harvested mainly from the era of Modernism.

In this presentation from Design Indaba Conference 2014, they trace their career as an “alphabet” of influences, from A to Z, showing inspirational ideas, people or movements alongside examples of their own produced work.

An iconic poster by Dutch cartoon artist Bernard Willem Holtrop with a reversed lower case “A” inspired the trio for its “sharp and clear design but contrarian element,” says Stolk.

The group cites multiple other creative thinkers and revolutionaries who have influenced their work.

A conceptual piece by the American artist Sol Lewitt that consisted of a set of step-by-step instructions for creating his artwork gave them the idea for how to communicate their graphic identity for the Whitney Museum, which uses endlessly varying angles of the letter “W” to fit different contexts.

Their design of the Whitney’s new identity was also informed by the No Wave post-punk sub-culture that sprung up in New York City in the late 1970s and early 80s. “Since it is one of the prisms through which we view New York City, it was only logical that some of the language of No Wave would make its way into the Whitney project,” says van den Dungen.

If there is one consistent theme in Experimental Jetset’s work it is a personal relationship to Modernism. But they offer this caveat: “We have to admit that we have a very broad definition of Modernism. In fact, we usually speak of Modernisms,” says Stolk.

This year for the first time, the Design Indaba Conference talks make their premiere on our app, conveniently packaged in one place and available for free download. To watch Experimental Jetset’s full conference talk download the app  here  or keep watching designindaba.com for updates.

Watch the Talk with Experimental Jetset

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experimental jetset interview

‘the new luxury’ (2009), A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa ‘rien ne va plus’ (2009), A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa

experimental jetset is a small, independent, amsterdam-based graphic design studio consisting of marieke stolk, erwin brinkers and danny van den dungen. designboom spoke to them about writing, johan cruijff and the myth that they ‘always’ use helvetica.

DB: please could you tell us about the evolution of your studio?

EJ: we all met at the rietveld academy, when we were students. at their graduation project, marieke and danny were working on the redesign of blvd (a dutch pop-culture magazine, now defunct), and they asked erwin who was in another class (a year below), to help them out. this all happened in 1997.

in general  the three of us do everything together. we aren’t really proper football fans, but as a model for the studio, we always have to think about an interview we once saw on dutch TV, in which legendary player johan cruijff explained the concept of ‘totaal voetbal’ (‘total football’), and that was really inspirational. total football is a system where a player who moves out of his position can be replaced by any other player from the same team. so the roles aren’t fixed; any player has the ability to be attacker, defender or midfielder.  

in short, our ideal is to stay away from fixed roles. when dealing with stress and deadlines, we sometimes fall back into certain roles, but we try very hard to avoid that. our intention is that the workload is divided equally, and that each one of us has more or less the same set of skills.

DB: which have been your most satisfying projects to date?

EJ: right now, we would the say that the two projects that really pushed our boundaries have been the exhibition ‘ two or three things I know about provo ‘, and the graphic identity of the whitney museum . these two projects have been the most satisfying, in the sense that they both required us to function to our full abilities. writing, reading, researching, designing for printed matter and signage, even working with sound and moving image – in both projects, we did all that.

we worked on both projects during the same period (the years of 2011 and 2012), and in retrospect, they have a lot in common. sure, at first sight, they seem worlds apart – developing the graphic identity for the whitney was a very strict process, involving dozens of meetings and presentations, while curating ‘two or three things I know about provo’ was a much more improvised, low-budget affair; and while ‘two or three things’ dealt with a subject that was very close to our heart, our role at the whitney project was basically that of relative outsiders – but despite these differences, both projects did require the same level of energy, the same kind of intensity.

also, both projects were very city-specific. ‘two or three things’ was an exhibition about provo, an anarchist movement that was very much shaped by the city of amsterdam (by the same token, amsterdam was shaped by provo). and the graphic identity of the whitney was very much grounded in the city of new york – in the sense that, during the design process, it became clear to us that the shape of the ‘zigzag’ could refer to things such as the ziggurat-shape of the architecture (of both the current and future building of the whitney), or the iconic fire-escape stairs in the streets of new york, or the zigzag-like path of the whitney museum through manhattan, throughout the years. also, we did a lot of research into the history of the whitney museum, and the history of american modernism in general – the specific moment that europe stopped being the center of modern art, and new york became the new capital. so, in the whitney project as well as in ‘two or three things’, we really tried to explore this notion of ‘city-specificity’.

DB: helvetica features frequently in your portfolio – is there a reason why you find yourself drawn to using this typeface for many different purposes? and was there a reason why you decided not to use the typeface in your recent re-design of the whitney identity?

EJ: it’s obviously not true that we always use helvetica – but nevertheless, we can’t deny that the late-modernist graphic landscape in which we grew up (we’re talking about the netherlands in the ’70s here) had a big influence on us. as a consequence, we feel as if this late-modernist vocabulary (of which helvetica is undeniably a part) has become our authentic language, our mother tongue. it’s our everyday way of talking, our natural tone of voice. and it’s only logical that this late-modernist dialect can be detected all throughout our work. we’re simply not the kind of people who feel it’s necessary to suppress one’s own dialect.

but that doesn’t mean we always use the same typeface. especially when you look at the graphic identities we designed for museums and cultural institutes, you’ll notice that we have used various typefaces, often for very specific conceptual reasons. for example, for the graphic identity we designed in 2004 for stedelijk museum CS (SMCS), we specifically used univers, to refer to the history of the institute. and for the graphic identity we created in 2007 for le cent quatre (104), we used futura, so that the 104 logo could really be ’embedded’ in the typeface. in other words, it’s a total myth that we always use helvetica – but it’s an amusing myth, we have to admit.

as for the specific version of neue haas grotesk (NHG) that we used for the graphic identity of the whitney… we met christian schwartz back in 2009, during a type conference in wellington, new zealand; and during our conversation, christian mentioned the version of nhg he was working on. two years later, when we started to work on the whitney, we remembered this conversation, and realized that NHG might be the right typeface for this project.

we thought there was quite a fascinating link to be found between the two projects. on the one hand, there’s christian schwartz, an american designer working on his interpretation of an european typeface. and on the other hand, there’s us, a european design studio, working on our interpretation of the graphic identity of an american museum. we saw a really intriguing parallel there, an interesting ‘zigzag’ between europe and the united states. we figured this could be an interesting extra little storyline to add to the graphic identity, as a sort of sub-sub-plot.

there were also more pragmatic reasons to use NHG. it’s a typeface that comes with a very wide variety of weights, style and special characters – it can be used for all kinds of purposes (text, display, etc.), while still maintaining a consistent, graphic tone. (it was especially important for us that the word ‘whitney’ would appear in the same typeface as the headline text, and the body text – we didn’t want a logo that would behave as a sort of alien element, completely separated from the rest of the text).

as it turned out, hilary greenbaum, head of the design department of the whitney, knew christian schwartz personally, which also turned out to be a really happy coincidence. it was an ideal situation, as the design department could contact christian schwartz directly, to work out technical and practical details (for example, for the whitney, christian worked on a special digital version of NHG, which is used on the whitney website).

DB: do you think it’s important for a graphic designer to be able to draw?

EJ: that fully depends on one’s definition of drawing. in a way, we would argue that creating a typographic composition is a form of drawing as well – in the same way that drawing is essentially a form of writing. what is interesting about graphic design is exactly the fact that it is a field in which it is impossible to distinguish between writing and drawing, between the verbal and the visual.

this is already encapsulated in the etymology of the word ‘graphic’ – originally, the word is derived from the proto-indo-european base-word ‘grebh’, which simply means ‘to carve’ or ‘to scratch’; but in greek times, the word ‘graphikos’ referred both to the act of drawing and writing. in a sense, we do believe that the current practice of graphic design still refers to this classic notion – the idea that writing is a form of drawing, and drawing is a form of writing.

DB: what do you think the most significant developments in graphic design have been in the last five years?

EJ: the crisis we currently find ourselves in. and we’re not talking about an aesthetic or conceptual crisis in graphic design – in fact, we think the work created by young graphic designers nowadays is more interesting than it was in previous decades. we’re really talking about the economic and political crisis that is taking place in society at large. and obviously, this crisis has a very dramatic effect on the current cultural landscape.

there used to be a time when cultural institutes and museums would really support independent studios, and young designers. but nowadays (mainly because of the whole mixture of neo-liberalism, privatization and populism that is currently forced upon us), a lot of cultural institutes (even the smaller ones) simply decide to play it safe, and choose to work with large branding and advertising agencies instead. in turn, these large advertising agencies then just hire some young designers, to do the ‘cultural work’ for them – and just discard these young designers after the work is done. after all, for these large agencies, these cultural projects serve primarily to add some ‘depth’ to their corporate portfolios – but they wouldn’t want to actually invest in those cultural projects, in any intellectual or ideological way.   

we feel there’s a really strange discrepancy going on – while young designers seem to be getting more and more intellectual and progressive, a lot of cultural institutes are actually trying to achieve a more populist tone, and getting more conservative. they seem to move in opposite directions – and we have no idea how this rift can ever be solved.

young designers are currently producing a lot of very interesting work – but this production takes place on a more subcultural, isolated level: in the spheres of self-publishing, small exhibitions, underground projects. to survive, these young designers are either forced to work (or worse, to intern for free) for large corporate agencies, or they have to find a ‘day-time job’, outside of the field of graphic design. there seem to be fewer and fewer opportunities nowadays for young designers to just start their own small, independent studios, and inject their ideas straight into the public space – and we think that’s a real shame.

in harsh times like these, we think it’s really important for independent designers and small studios to stick together, and keep an open mind towards each other. above all, we should maintain some sense of solidarity, of dignity. we might have our aesthetic or conceptual differences, but in the end, we’re all in the same boat. it’s so easy to constantly attack each other, but all this energy can be better put to use trying to actually survive.

DB: besides graphic design / visual communication what are each of you passionate about?

EJ: music plays a large role in our life, and in our work. in previous interviews, we often mention the influence of punk – although we were too young to actively participate in the original punk explosion of 1977, we could still hear the echoes of this explosion throughout the ’80s, and it really inspired us. as teenagers, we were involved in all kinds of post-punk subcultures (two-tone ska, psychobilly, new wave, garage rock, mod, american hardcore, etc.), and all these movements shaped us in the most profound way. (in fact, it were post-punk relics such as record sleeves, buttons/badges, patches, DIY fanzines, mix-tapes, t-shirts and xeroxed mini-comics that made us aware of graphic design in the first place).

so in our work, we really try to synthesize all these (seemingly conflicting) influences: the language of late-modernism of the ’70s (which shaped us in an almost subconscious way, during our childhood years) and the post-punk landscape of the ’80s (which inspired us in a much more explicit way, during our teenage years). during the ’90s, we were in our twenties, and went to art academy while grunge was going on, which left some traces as well (don’t forget that our studio is named after a ’90s album by sonic youth).

DB: is there any piece of advice you’ve been given that you remember often?

an advice that comes to mind is ‘never excuse, never explain’, which isn’t really an advice that someone actually gave to us – it’s more a sort of general remark we once came across. the quote is attributed to a lot of different people (sometimes also appearing as ‘never complain, never explain’), and we actually wouldn’t know if we’d consider it ‘good’ or ‘bad’ advice. but for some reason, we have been thinking a lot about this phrase, lately.

we write a lot about our work – not as an explanation, and certainly not as an excuse, but more because the activity of writing enables us to reflect on our own work, to look at our work from a bit of a distance. it’s really just a way of organizing our own thoughts. so when, around 2005, we decided to make our first proper website, we thought it would be interesting to include texts like these. mainly because we don’t necessarily see our website as a portfolio, attracting possible clients – we see it more as a diary, or a personal archive. in fact, our texts would sooner scare away clients than attract them. our website was always intended for the tiny group of people who were really interested in our work, in the stories behind it. our writing, our tone of voice, is simply not for everyone – it’s a ‘stream-of-consciousness’, long-winding, free-associating way of talking. the simple truth is, we aren’t proper writers, or professional academics, or real intellectuals – for us, the texts are just by-products of the labour of design. nothing more (but certainly nothing less). so in that sense, we feel we have nothing to be embarrassed about.

on the other hand, we also realize that, by writing, we are basically handing out ammunition to our critics. it’s funny – many critics always argue that ‘designers should write more’, but the moment you actually write a text, critics are the first to immediately tear it apart, isolating every single sentence to ridicule your text. so we know we are making ourselves very vulnerable with these texts.

that’s why, sometimes, the idea of simply not writing anymore sounds very attractive. when we hear about authors or musicians who never do interviews, and never appear in public – we always find that quite fascinating. it sometimes makes us doubt whether we did the right thing, being so open and honest about our practice from the very beginning.

it seems too late to change direction now – although we sometimes do fantasize about removing all text from our website. we probably won’t do this anytime soon – but the people who are indeed interested in our texts, might start storing them, just to be on the safe side.

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