The Debate, Part 3

This month, The Monacelli Press publishes the first English translation of a famous 1972 debate between Dutch graphic designers Wim Crouwel and Jan van Toorn, a public clash of subjectivity versus objectivity at Amsterdam’s Museum Fodor that helped set the stage for bold philosophical showdowns to come in design culture.

Held in response to an exhibition of Van Toorn’s work at Stedelijk Museum, including student posters protesting the Vietnam War—in an era of youth culture and increasing resistance to authority, capitalism, and the power of media—the stakes were aesthetic, ethical, and politically charged.

This week, Design Observer publishes four excerpts from The Debate, now available from Monacelli.

Read parts 1 and 2.
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Within a year of each other, Jan van Toorn and Wim Crouwel each designed a catalog for an exhibition of the work of visual artist Jan Dibbets (b. 1941). Van Toorn did so in late 1971 as the in-house typographer of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, while Crouwel did so in the same role for the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. The character of each catalog differs significantly: the Van Abbesmuseum catalog looks much like an artist’s book, while the Stedelijk one has a retrospective character. Similarly, the typographic views expressed are quite divergent.

On the back cover of the Van Abbemuseum catalog there are two brief comments on the work of the artist. Museum director Jean Leering starts off as follows: “In this catalog, Jan Dibbets would prefer not to see an introduction to his work. The work should have to be plain, as such, or rather, the meaning of the work only reveals itself by looking at it—through visual observation instead of verbal consideration.”

The front cover shows a field of two shades of blue, the surrounding white serving as passe-partout. Inside the booklet, it is revealed that the two shades refer to a blue sky over a dark blue sea. The images are printed in black-and-white, but in the same size and position as on the cover. They show, however, the horizon fading from view while the sea is on the rise. A loose insert lists the works on display.

Above: Jan Van Toorn, cover and spread for Jan Dibbets catalog, Van Abbemuseum, 1971

Jan van Toorn worked as graphic designer for the Van Abbemuseum from 1965 to 1973. Each catalog he designed for Eindhoven has a markedly individual character and realization. Each time the specific topic of the publication had a strong influence on his typographic approach. For this reason, the designs all leave a different impression, making them distinctly recognizable.

Aside from two essays about Dibbets and his work, the unpaginated Stedelijk publication comprises a biography, a listing of selected solo and group exhibitions, a concise bibliography, and an overview of film and video works. The elaborate list of works on display is added separately.

Crouwel considered the Stedelijk Museum catalogs as items in a series, requiring that each one be instantly recognizable as coming from that museum. He strengthened this identity through the rigid typographic views he systematically applied. For example, he always used the same typeface, Univers, always in the same size. Although Crouwel relied on bold or italics for typographic emphasis while avoiding variations in type size and underlining, he did experiment with color and different kinds of paper. His catalogs always had the same height, but their width could vary.

Crouwel designed catalogs for the Amsterdam museum for twenty years, from 1964 to 1984. His rigorous system to a certain degree neutralized the personality of the individual artist, the catalog’s actual subject. His preference for grids stands out. This layout plan for both typography and the placement of illustrations defined every design’s basic principles. He handled the opportunities provided by the grid in a highly disciplined way, creating a recognizable yet always unpredictable result. At the same time, each publication looked like an issue of a journal.

Within Total Design, the studio Crouwel set up with others in 1963, he further developed the notion of grids with such like-minded practitioners as Benno Wissing and Hartmut Kowalke. In the end, the development of grids and the standardization of typefaces, typesetting, and paper sizes not only saved time when working on assignments, it also ensured their quality. With the ready availability of grids on preprinted sheets, assignments could be executed quickly. And because all sorts of typographical problems were thought out in advance, not much time was lost in making design decisions.

Above and top: Wim Crouwel, cover and spreads for Jan Dibbets catalog, Stedelijk Museum, 1972

As a result, it was possible to work on many assignments simultaneously, while the elaborated designs still had a uniform appearance. It was colleague Jurriaan Schrofer who once labeled Wim Crouwel as the “system-general.”

Observed