Design Feast Series: Quotes

“We think this kind of online peer-to-peer criticism is counterproductive on a very practical level as well. In our view, what this whole subculture of small, independent studios really needs is a sense of solidarity. It could do with less bickering, less backstabbing.

We think this whole international scene of small studios is really special, and we should try to protect it as much as possible. The independent studio is pretty much a threatened species. The catastrophic influence from branding-, marketing- and PR-people becomes more and more visible every day. Large advertising conglomerates are taking over the kind of territory that was usually covered by smaller, more cultural studios. The world has gone mad, and even the smallest client suddenly wants to work with pitches and competitions, because they believe this is the way it should be. We really think that, in the middle of all madness, we should stick together. We should use our combined energy to defend this whole subculture of small studios. We shouldn’t be putting energy in complaining about each others work. ‘I would have kerned this logo in a completely different way’ … well, of course you would have kerned it in a completely different way. But what’s the point moaning about that in public? We all have different graphic languages; that’s the beauty of it. Why spend so much energy on what are basically small stylistic differences? …

You know how people sometimes say that ‘the work should speak for itself’? We never really bought that phrase. The point is, we are quite traditional, old-school graphic designers. We design objects to function within very specific contexts. So the moment you present those objects within a totally different context, as flat digital images on a website, it’s only logical that you need some words to at least sketch the original context.

Added to that, we really enjoy ‘background information’. We love reading about artists and their methods, watching documentaries about the making of movies, listening to writers being interviewed on the radio. We like the idea that behind every artifact, behind every designed object or piece of art, there is a complete universe of ideas, references, stories. So we like to add to this ‘background genre’ by creating, on the internet, a small hidden gateway to our own micro-universe. We are not saying that everybody should read it, or like it; on the contrary, we really created our archive for the small group of people really interested in it.”

Marieke Stolk, Danny van den Dungen and Erwin Brinkers, Founders and Designers of Experimental Jetset