Interview mit Remco van Bladel

Why did you study in two different degree programs?

I only drew as a kid. So I was wondering what I could do with that on a professional basis. A friend of my father was in the advertising business, so I thought this could be it. I applied for a school and they accepted me. Back then, when I started at St. Lucas, Boxtel, I didn’t expected the field of graphic design to be so broad. This was more an advertising and presentation school, and it felt like a natural step for me to develop. Two of my main teachers, who both went to art school, saw my development and advised me to also go. When I went there, it was exactly what I wanted. It was a more free, more liberated way of thinking of how you could work with type and with imagery, and it was also related to specifically that time. Back then, American graphic designer David Carson was a very big, well-known designer, who was highly influential in the field of magazines and punk music. I think that was something that also inspired me to continue studying and go to art school.

For us, it feels like studying graphic design is about finding yourself, having a platform to experiment and finding the way you want to work. What do you think is the most important thing we can learn while studying something creative?

Well, I think graphic design isn’t as linear as it was maybe ten or fifteen years ago, when our profession was mainly focused on creating print as a physical output: being able to juggle with not only the content, but also in terms of what you could do at the printer itself or with the materials. Nowadays, our profession expanded so that you are liberated to an extent of choosing your media. So you are able to experiment and can have a highly personal perspective on whatever topic or theme. That changes everything in the way you develop as a young designer, and it enables you to enter a process of creating an idea so open that it can mutate into any type of media. And that broad aspect to our profession is really interesting to me.

You worked for a pretty straightforward design studio, Solar Initiative, for 6 years and started the art collective and band project Sonido Gris and later Onomatopee. Would you say that the way you worked in those institutions differ a lot?

Yes, in a way those two were pretty different. Solar Initiative was actually partially a photography agency and partially a graphic design studio. We had a mix of large corporate clients and smaller cultural clients. I think what bound that together with my notions of what I wanted to do with both Sonido Gris and Onomatopee was that there was also a sense of freedom in terms of the media. I think that was a very good start as an environment. I learned so much there because of that.

So it was also a need for work with an artistic or experimental approach that made you work on Onomatopee projects after you finished your work at the studio?

Exactly. During the day I would just make a normal living, and then at night I would start my nightshift and rethink and reshape this other platform to my own needs.

You always worked in collectives and studios, and you do a lot of collaborations. What was the intention in opening your own studio?

There were also things I wanted to do besides Onomatopee. Onomatopee grew into being less a publisher and more a presentation space; the exhibitions became more important. I have had my studio since 2008, but in 2011 I decided to leave Onomatopee and focus on my own studio. We were still able to work together, but I needed space to develop other types of publishing projects that interested me, for example the online ones like WdW Review and e-flux’ Supercommunity that I’ve been working on in the past couple of years.

How many people do you work with in your studio? Do you have ongoing cooperations, employees and freelancers?

It’s mainly me. There is Andrea, my core assistant, and twice a week Susanne who helps me run the studio. Then there are always a couple of freelance designers, or web developers going in and out to work on projects. And, of course, with the teaching I am also not there once a week, so it’s always good to have a continuity: if something comes up when I am not around, there is always someone to pick it up.

You have a lot of different projects and you always work very content-related, holding back a strongly recognizable style. Do you have kind of repeating approaches in your work?

(Hesitates) Yes, I think there are. Although it is hard to pinpoint them. But I know for a fact that I usually try to uplift the content in a straightforward and simplistic way. In the last couple of years I have been working a lot with people and institutions with a very theoretical approach or with art critique in general on very heavily text-based projects. I always consider myself to be the opposite of the very content-driven designers like, for instance, Metahaven, so I am not the ‘intellectual designer’, not an ‘author’ in that sense. I try to read in, see what is going on and then pick something really small, very evident, that I think is super important to blow up and enlarge and frame that, so that even a slightly less literate audience can also understand it. Not per se downgrade it, just pick one small spot and then work from there. It is one common approach that I usually have. Besides, I also see myself working with typography and systems. I like flipping around with words. I see that as a relationship between sound, language and typography not as a placement but as a kind of ‘panning’ or ‘fading’. That is also something that I use quite often.

You are also a musician. Is there a difference between the musician Remco van Bladel and the designer Remco van Bladel? What relation do you see between music and graphic design? Why did you choose graphic design over music?

Well, my musical endeavors have been quite neglected (laughs) in the last couple of years because of the intensity of the graphic projects. But I still try to maneuver it into my projects somehow. For me the relationship between audio or sound in general and graphic design is very important. I think it relates to my punk rock mentality I mentioned before. But even theoretical approaches, like John Cage’s chance operations, Steve Reich’s phase shifting techniques are elements that I embedded in my way of thinking of typography in terms of how you prioritize information. I use sound a lot as a metaphor in my work: not a well-constructed notion on how it should function within my practice but as something immanent, that is always there.

In an interview for COLAB you said that specification in a certain field can help, but creating good graphic design mostly needs the right mindset. What is your mindset?

I like the mindset of trying to be as blank as possible whenever starting a new project. But there are always longer threads or systems running across multiple projects. If you see my work, there’s nothing ‘punk rock’ in it, but I think there’s something behind it that everyone recognizes. It needs to be as pure and honest as possible. I completely dive in, submerge into a project, I absorb and make it my own, I feel responsible. This is my output. The mindset is a very subjective thing, it’s hard to describe. To show a complete and unlimited passion for the work that you make is perhaps an important part of that. I also read that about other work.

The fields you work in, like culture, art and music seem very attractive to a lot of graphic designers. Is it actually attractive to work in those fields?

For me they are very attractive, but I think it has a lot to do with the people I’m working with on these topics. There is a little book by “Roma Publications no 90”, which is super important to me. It’s an overview of their selected works and projects, which they made in Portugal; it’s called “Os livros fazem amigos”  – books make friends. And I relate to that because people I work with become either friends or are already friends. We get really close when we collaborate. My work is based on this ‘partnership’. Just like a ‘band’.

Do you think we should engage more in political or scientific issues, that this should also be a graphic designer’s responsibility? Is that maybe a field that will become more important in the future?

I have been working a lot with politics lately, but I don’t consider myself per se a politically engaged designer. I can just as well work my ass off on a photography book that has nothing to do with politics.
I work together with Jonas Staal a lot; he is a very politically engaged visual artist. We share a common approach in terms of how we work. The combination of the two of us brings a project to life. I think that these topics are super important, because I can relate to them, engage with them. And given our day and age, with everything what is going on it the world around us, it is really hard to ignore and to not let that affect your work.
From a more technological perspective, I’m more interested in the questions: “‘how do we bring that to specific people?” ; “how does technology relate to a profession in such a way that it makes us rethink our profession in a way that we can’t even grasp right now?”
The question of how we can communicate and relate to these topics within different media intrigues me as a teacher, working with my students. I let them try to envision these future scenarios. If we can’t perceive such a device, how could we design for it? It’s interesting to work from that angle, because it is super hypothetic. It makes you wonder, it makes you curious about what your profession could look like.

Do you think Dutch design differs from design from other countries?

I don’t think that Dutch design is Dutch. You don’t have to be Dutch; it’s enough to be there. So that brings in talents from all over the world to mix and match with all the locals and all the other ones. Asking critical questions, adding irony or humor to the work for your client instead of just executing their wishes is perhaps what happens here more often, but I don’t think that we can claim that as being Dutch. I think that’s the Zeitgeist of the 2000s: borders between professions are starting to disappear, like design and art.

You have been working in the field for a long time now. Do you sense any changes in your profession?

Of course there have been some big changes. But we still make books. We still use specific inks. The big thing that is changing is the digital media and the way we are starting to really read online now. Ten years ago, we also used a website to get information. But that has rapidly changed in five years time. Now we have people reading long texts or extensive essays purely on eReaders or on websites. And then the smart phone revolution came. I’m reading more on my telephone than I ever did in printed media, I think. And it was around 2011 when we were finally released from the hold of web fonts and when modern browsers accepted OpenType features. Which is fairly important to me, because that opened up the possibility to finally do typography on screen, like I used to do in print. I can kern, I can space, I can have ligatures on a web-based machine, which is fantastic for me. That also triggered my interest in how can you play with CSS, HTML 5, Javascript and jQuery. Combine all of that and try to manipulate and create a reading experience that you used to have in a very properly typeset book, for instance. I still think that is pretty radical, although it’s common right now. Thinking in terms of navigational features or how you use applications and co-working with programmers on such ideas. That is for me the biggest change in the past five years.

Do you think we should apply all the knowledge that we collected in printing to the new media, to give the people what they know already?

Yeah exactly! We can put craftsmanship back into the digital realm, without being nostalgic and trying to simulate paper, because there is no paper in the screen. Let’s say you are reading a novel. If you really like the story, you will read it through in a wink. Then the book was probably a really good typeset, because the type didn’t effect or bother you. So hopefully we can now also do the same thing with reading on our telephones or on any other device. That needs to be reinvestigated!

Do you think print will die?

No! I think the good part is that it will become a niche product.

Is it becoming more valuable?

Exactly. We are not making less experimental books. Probably even more than before. If you look at Irma Boom, Hans Gremmen or Joost Grootens for example. Just a pick of designers from the Netherlands of course, but they mastered the skill of creating very unique print objects that have a very specific value. If you hold them. If you have them. If you smell them. If you look at them. They are unique books, which even transcend and create a bigger value for either the artworks that are represented inside or the content that they display. As kind of an archival object and reading experience they will not die, I think, but the cost will be higher and it will be more exclusive.

So maybe it will be like vinyl in music, more for collectors. Maybe only the commercial content will become digital.

Yes. The good thing about the internet is that the world is your market. You can make a thousand books, it’s not a high print run. It still costs a lot of money to create a beautiful book in a thousand copies, but if you can sell them to the world — it could take two months, it could take two years — then those thousand copies are still worth the investment. So doing print is also having a slow pace, being proud of what you do and feeling what you do is going to have a value in the long run.

There is a quote by the Dutch graphic designer Ben Duvall basically saying that through digitalization of our world, digital surface is becoming living space and thus graphic designers are becoming the new architects. Do you agree? If yes, why?

I think our effect on the world has increased ever since our profession started in the early twentieth century. If we take into consideration ‘corporate design’ that started around the fifties and developed over time, I think brands, identities or pieces of graphic design in general are now so important that they are taking the lead. They formulate a kind of thinking. By doing so they even push architects to adapt this way of thinking. So, our profession becomes more prominent in our daily life. Architects were super important in the past centuries in terms of how to create a society and its symbolism. But now we are looking at our smartphones all day. We hardly look up to see the buildings around us anymore, so we already surpassed them anyway. If that’s a good thing, I don’t know – because there is a lot of crap produced out there.

Thanks for the interview.