Dutch Design

Experimentation and Dutch design have long gone hand in hand, from postage stamps to the Rietveld chair to the clean simplicity of Schiphol airport. Mienke Simon Thomas skillfully details the groundbreaking accomplishments and popular products of Dutch design in Dutch Design Culture. Thomas, a museum curator, delves deeply into the rich design history of the Netherlands, beginning with the historical roots of Dutch crafts education and the moral and social ideals of modernism that became central to the nation’s cultural dialogue. Touching upon such issues as the emergence of the professional industrial designer, public work initiatives, debates about design as art, and the provocative notion of “anti-design,” Thomas argues that though Dutch design from the beginning has been driven by aims of functionality, simplicity, and affordability, it has also embraced luxury and exclusivity. The book also discusses the role played by leading Dutch designers and their works, including Wim Crouwel, Marcel Wanders, and the design collective Droog Design. An unprecedented, detailed history, Dutch Design Culture is a critical primer on one of the leading national design movements today.

This year a total of 295 entries were assessed for their distinctive qualities by a panel of experts looking for outstanding work in areas such as content, design, picture editing, typography, choice of materials, printing, and binding. The ?Best Dutch Book Designs 2019? presents a comprehensive overview of the 33 selections made during this difficult yet rewarding process. The catalogue includes detailed information about each publication, its technical execution, and unique insights into the significant aspects that made each one a cut above the rest. 00Exhibition: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (03.10.-01.11.2020).

An extensive and timely survey of innovative contemporary design in the Netherlands: always verging on the experimental and universally recognized as a melting pot of cutting-edge twenty-first-century creativity. This overview features work by Rem Koolhaas, MVRDV, Ben van Berkel & Caroline Bos, Marcel Wanders, Petra Blaisse, and Jop van Bennekom, among others. One thousand images offer a visual sourcebook of Dutch design in all forms, including architecture, urban planning, industrial design, and graphic design.

"The following pages comprise a sourcebook of over 1000 designs since the turn of the century. It is intended as a tool not only for the consumer, but also for those seeking inspiration in their own design work. Each object is presented with a caption providing full technical details, as well as the websites of the manufacturers, or designers where relevant. Commentaries throughout shed light on the work of personalities and on trends, making the book more than just a catalogue of desirable objects."--BOOK JACKET.

Since the 1990s, in response to dramatic transformations in the worlds of technology and the economy, design - a once relatively definable discipline, complete with a set of sub-disciplines - has become unrecognizable. Consequently, design scholars have begun to address new issues, themes and sub-disciplines such as: sustainable design, design for well-being, empathic design, design activism, design anthropology, and many more. The Routledge Companion to Design Studies charts this new expanded spectrum and embraces the wide range of scholarship relating to design - theoretical, practice-related and historical - that has emerged over the last four decades. Comprised of forty-three newly-commissioned essays, the Companion is organized into the following six sections: Defining Design: Discipline, Process Defining Design: Objects, Spaces Designing Identities: Gender, Sexuality, Age, Nation Designing Society: Empathy, Responsibility, Consumption, the Everyday Design and Politics: Activism, Intervention, Regulation Designing the World: Globalization, Transnationalism, Translation Contributors include both established and emerging scholars and the essays offer an international scope, covering work emanating from, and relating to, design in the United Kingdom, mainland Europe, North America, Asia, Australasia and Africa. This comprehensive collection makes an original and significant contribution to the field of Design Studies.

This important study introduces the key theories of national identity, and relates them to the broad fields of product, graphic and fashion design. Javier Gimeno-Martinez approaches the inter-relationship between national identity and cultural production from two perspectives: the distinctive characteristics of a nation's output, and the consumption of design products within a country as a means of generating a national design landscape. Using case studies ranging from stamps in nineteenth century Russian-occupied Finland, to Coca-Cola as an 'American' drink in modern Trinidad and Tobago, he addresses concepts of essentialism, constructivism, geography and multiculturality, and considers the works of key theorists, including Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm and Doreen Massey. This illuminating book offers the first comprehensive account of how national identity and cultural policy have shaped design, while suggesting that traditional formations of the 'national' are increasingly unsustainable in an age of globalisation, migration and cultural diversity. Javier Gimeno-Martinez is Lecturer in Design Cultures at the VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands.