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Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey – Catalogue
Published to celebrate the major retrospective at the Design Museum in London, this catalogue offers a comprehensive overview of the work of one of the most important and influential graphic designers of the modern era.
But this is not a usual formulaic design book: instead, Crouwel’s posters, catalogues, documents, manuals – even his stamps and personal photographs – are presented in the raw, bare-concrete setting of the Crouwel archive.
As Tony Brook, the exhibition’s curator and the book’s co-editor and designer notes: ‘This approach exposes the process of making an exhibition, and of imparting the sense of discovery as archive boxes are opened to reveal hidden treasure. It also gives a greater sense of Crouwel’s work as objects that functioned in the real world rather than mere representations seen in only in books.’
The book contains an interview with Wim Crouwel conducted by Tony Brook. During the course of the discussion, Crouwel describes his early life, his formative years – including his period at Total Design – and his philosophy of design.
The book comes with three different cover photographs, and a variety of title stickers. You can select the cover image you want (stickers are random).
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Wim Crouwel ‘C’ Portfolio – Set of Five Prints
This limited edition set of five Wim Crouwel ‘C’ prints has been designed exclusively for the Design Museum Shop by Spin and come packaged in a special presentation sleeve.
“C is for Crouwel. Under normal circumstances a C is a simple letter, but a Wim Crouwel designed letterform is a different matter altogether. The Cs I have chosen show off his love of geometry, systematic thinking and mastery of abstract form.” – Tony Brook, Spin
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Limited edition set of posters inspired by Wim Crouwel
Unit Editions in collaboration with the Design Museum in London commissioned an international cast of graphic designers, each known for their admiration for the work of Wim Crouwel, to design a poster celebrating the major retrospective devoted to the life and work of Wim Crouwel, currently on show at the Design Museum.
The designers were commissioned to submit a poster based on the dimensions and grid of the legendary original Stedelijk Museum posters, as created by Crouwel during his time as the museum’s designer.
All the posters are silk-screened by hand and in many cases the designers have overseen the printing.
Poster 1: Designed by Spin
Poster 2: Designed by Cartlidge Levene
Poster 3: Designed by Build
Poster 4: Designed by Experimental Jetset
Poster 5: Designed by MuirMcNeil
Poster 6: Designed by Philippe Apeloig
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New Alphabet Rug
New Alphabet is a geometric typeface designed by Wim Crouwel and the inspiration behind this rug designed by Spin exclusively for the Design Museum Shop. Released in 1967, the typeface embraces the limitations of Cathode Ray Tube technology used by early screens and phototypesetting equipment and thus only contains horizontal and vertical strokes.
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Wim Crouwel Exhibition Poster
“The decision to use Crouwel designed C’s and give them a new context, is a simple premise. Of course C is for Crouwel – and under normal circumstances a C is a simple and unimpressive letter, but a Wim Crouwel designed letterform is of course a different matter altogether. The C’s I chose show off Crouwel’s love of geometry, his systematic thinking and his mastery of abstract form. By making new images out of these forms I hope I gave them a contemporary context that reinforces his relevance to today.” – Tony Brook
It’s been a while since I’ve featured anything Spin related on SI. But seeing as the ‘Wim Crouwel, A Graphic Odyssey’ Exhibition is still running at the Design Museum (until 3rd July) I thought it would be nice to feature a large selection of print Spin designed to accompany the exhibition including a few exclusive images that aren’t available elsewhere online – all in high-resolution of course :)
Also included in this feature (besides the Spin stuff) are the Crouwel inspired posters because I figured: hey, if you dear reader or even myself, wants to buy one or more of these posters, it would be nice to see a nice big image before I click on the purchase button ;)
Big thank you once again to Natasha at Spin & Unit Editions for making this feature possible.
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This post is tagged Catalogues, Communications, Posters, Print
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