H N Werkman

An extraordinary look at the work of a highly influential avant-garde designer, typographer, and printmaker Dutch designer and printmaker Hendrik Werkman (1882-1945) is best known for his innovative printing techniques and avant-garde typography. As publisher of De Blauwe Schuitt, a series of underground booklets produced by Jewish dissident poets and writers during the Nazi occupation of Holland, Werkman was imprisoned by German secret police in 1945 and executed without trial just three days before the country's liberation. This generously illustrated book is the first in English to focus on Werkman's remarkable graphic work and fascinating life. Werkman founded his own printmaking shop in 1908. His self-produced magazine The Next Call waspublished in 1923 and included typographical and other printmaking experiments as well as the designer's own Dadaist poems and texts. Werkman also developed a printmaking process he called "hot printing," a technique incorporating found materials that added repeated design elements directly onto the paper--all without the use of a printing press. Although much of his work was destroyed at the time of his execution, the remarkable examples that remain tell the story of a maverick designer and typographer whose graphic vision was playful, bold, experimental, and unwaveringly optimistic.

Hendrik Werkman, born in Groningen, Holland in 1882, was a printer, typographer, painter and printmaker. He is best known for his asymmetric typographic compositions and for his experimentation with letterpress printing techniques. He also printed without the press, a technique he called 'not printing'. In Graphic Design: A Concise History, Richard Hollis wrote: Werkman's uninhibited graphic invention has been an inspiration to graphic designers anxious to introduce an obviously 'creative' effect Like Piet Zwart, Werkman used type as collage. From 1923-26 Werkman created and printed an experimental typographic magazine, The Next Call. During the German occupation of Holland in World War II he ran an underground press and produced 40 issues of a subversive broadsheet. The Blue Barge. In 1945 he was executed by the Nazis, only two days before the liberation of Holland. Much of his work was destroyed at this time.

A revised edition of the standard guide to the avant-garde origins of modern graphic design and typography, illustrated with many iconic examples.

"A trailblazer in its day, Typographica is ripe for rediscovery and reappraisal by a new generation of designers and image-makers. Its boundary-blurring fusion of modernist experimentation, visual and concrete poetry, and environmental photography anticipated many of the preoccupations of contemporary designers, artists, and cultural commentators." "Rick Poyner offers a carefully researched and illustrated book, paying tribute to the significant contribution Herbert Spencer and Typographica made to graphic design history."--BOOK JACKET.

A study of the role of 'little magazines' and their contribution to the making of artistic modernism and the avant-garde across Europe, this volume is a major scholarly achievement of immense value to those interested in material culture of the 20th century.