What is the value of type competitions? A brief reflection on the common practice of awards hunting.

Third in the heavily subsidised series ‘Graphic design in the Netherlands’, Jan van Toorn, Critical Practice takes on the difficult task of exploring and striving to elucidate the work of Jan van Toorn (JvT), a designer who is not always clear about his intentions, who makes frequent use of inexplicable images and text, and whose work is often described with concepts such as ‘alienation’, ‘incomprehensibility’, ‘defamiliarisation’, ‘digressions’ and ‘intrusion’.

An honest appraisal of the role discussions about type design have in the broader culture today, and why there is a need for a more cohesive discussion within the field.

Graphic designer Willem Sandberg became the director of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in 1945. From that time until 1962 he designed almost all the printed matter for the Stedelijk and transformed the museum, introducing new ideas into the stuffy world of museums of that time.

Born in Austria. After having worked at M&Co. in New York and at the Hong Kong office of the advertising agency Leo Burnett, he formed the New...

Writer and design critic based in New York. He is a contributing editor for Metropolis magazine and research fellow for the Design Institute at the Un...