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Experimental Jetset SMCS Program Poster 2004

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• Experimental Jetset has 41 works online.
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Experimental Jetset Posters

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Experimental Jetset

• NAi Maastricht Jean Prouvé: The Poetics of the Technical Object Poster, 2007 Experimental Jetset
• Postcard for Stedelijk Museum Opening, 2012 Experimental Jetset
• Set of 10 Stamps for Stedelijk Museum Opening, 2012 Experimental Jetset
• Panels: An Inquiry into the Spatial, the Sonic and the Public, 2010 Experimental Jetset
• Panels: An Inquiry into the Spatial, the Sonic and the Public Invitation, 2010 Experimental Jetset
• Panels: An Inquiry into the Spatial, the Sonic and the Public Invitation (folded), 2010 Experimental Jetset
• NAi Maastricht The Edible City Poster, 2007 Experimental Jetset
• NAi Maastricht The Edible City Invitation, 2007 Experimental Jetset

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Experimental Jetset

Experimental Jetset play it straight. In staging their retrospective ’10 Years of Posters’ the Dutch graphic design group (Erwin Brinkers, Marieke Stolk and Danny van Dungen) adhered scrupulously to the unwritten code dictating how graphics should be shown in galleries. Their exhibition consists of 79 posters hung over three densely packed walls. Binder-clipped at the corners and hooked over transparent-topped drawing pins, they appear fresh-faced and informal. This mode of presentation allows them to teeter between the categories of useful object and discreet, contemplative image. It is an unassuming display in that it makes no great claims for the value of the posters in either sense.

Not only do they play their exhibitions straight; Experimental Jetset also produce design that conforms to the most stringent of graphic diktats. Using the typeface Helvetica (varied with the odd sprinkling of Univers), keeping to standard formats such as the A4 paper size and tucking their type and image into well-constructed grids, they create graphic compositions that would have satisfied the strictest of 1960s’ corporate Modernists. In the post-desktop publishing environment, where the rules of graphic design have been kicked around by professional and amateur alike, Experimental Jetset’s conformity has become a quirk. It is a trait that many fellow designers interpret as ironic – a cynical take on a more optimistic era.

But of course none of this – neither the direct style of display nor the Modernist graphic foibles – is as straight as it appears. On the most basic level Experimental Jetset does not have a decade of work behind it. The group formed in Amsterdam in 1997 and they have fudged the dates by including some of their 1996 student projects from the Rietveld Academy. In a similar vein, they are not poster designers as such. Unlike the masters of the art, designers from early 20th-century France or mid-century Eastern Europe, they do not consider the design of posters to be a freestanding public art. Rather, these designs are part of larger graphic systems: on the exhibition press release they are described as ‘by-products’.

More significantly, Experimental Jetset’s conformity to Modernist strictures is neither wholly in earnest nor a mockery; it is a considered acceptance. Modernist graphic designers failed in their own terms – however clean and well made a graphic form may be, it can never float free of cultural, social and economic associations – but they succeeded in founding a potent graphic tradition, particularly in northern Europe. Experimental Jetset choose to stick with this tradition, justifying their use of Helvetica with the claim that ‘late Modernism is the folk art of the Netherlands’. Of course, tradition is exactly what Experimental Jetset’s role models despised, and the group’s regard for their work may be an unwanted consolation prize, but that does not alter the sincerity of their admiration.

For anyone outside the graphic design community these arguments probably read like tortured formulations around a simple exhibition of good-looking, intelligent graphics. They would have a point. Experimental Jetset’s posters are so clever and formally resolved, who cares what the Helvetica-haters think (a surprisingly vehement breed, mostly consisting of American designers who believed they had slain the typeface once and for all two decades ago)? I particularly like a set of three posters designed for the Terminal Five show – the 2005 New York exhibition held in the Saarinen-designed TWA terminal at JFK airport, which is largely remembered for its runway-storming private view. Matching sweeping statements from Filippo Marinetti, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Theo van Doesburg with grainy, beautifully cropped photographs of aircraft, they manage the seemingly impossible combination of being both exhilarating and anachronistic. Originally posted on the streets of New York, they were intended to look like adverts for a non-existent airline. Once in the gallery, their typographic rhythm appears less corporate than elegiac. Other notable projects include the extended identity for the Stedelijk Museum’s temporary premises in a former mail-sorting office near Central Station – a playful meeting between the graphics of the museum and those of the Post Office – and their map-shaped Rorschach ink-blots designed for the 2004 Dutch entry to the Venice Biennale, ‘We Are the World’.

Standing within the graphic-lined walls of Experimental Jetset’s exhibition, although struck by the elegance of their output, I began to question just how minimal their visual vocabulary need be. Not only do they regulate their typefaces and their formats, but even their colours are limited almost exclusively to black, white, blue and red. Their asceticism seems to have increased with the passing years, with the odd splash of orange or turquoise that may have appeared in the late 1990s being expunged by the turn of the millennium. As their work stands, they run the risk of making Wim Crouwel – the most hardline late Modernist of them all – look like M/M, the French design team fêted for its flourishes. If this kind of self-restriction has an end-point, what is it? And if it doesn’t, where does it lead? These questions aren’t meant as criticisms: I am genuinely curious. What happens next?

Emily King is a London-based writer and curator with a specialism in design.

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experimental jetset interview

‘the new luxury’ (2009), A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa ‘rien ne va plus’ (2009), A0-sized screenprinted poster for naim / bureau europa

experimental jetset is a small, independent, amsterdam-based graphic design studio consisting of marieke stolk, erwin brinkers and danny van den dungen. designboom spoke to them about writing, johan cruijff and the myth that they ‘always’ use helvetica.

DB: please could you tell us about the evolution of your studio?

EJ: we all met at the rietveld academy, when we were students. at their graduation project, marieke and danny were working on the redesign of blvd (a dutch pop-culture magazine, now defunct), and they asked erwin who was in another class (a year below), to help them out. this all happened in 1997.

in general  the three of us do everything together. we aren’t really proper football fans, but as a model for the studio, we always have to think about an interview we once saw on dutch TV, in which legendary player johan cruijff explained the concept of ‘totaal voetbal’ (‘total football’), and that was really inspirational. total football is a system where a player who moves out of his position can be replaced by any other player from the same team. so the roles aren’t fixed; any player has the ability to be attacker, defender or midfielder.  

in short, our ideal is to stay away from fixed roles. when dealing with stress and deadlines, we sometimes fall back into certain roles, but we try very hard to avoid that. our intention is that the workload is divided equally, and that each one of us has more or less the same set of skills.

DB: which have been your most satisfying projects to date?

EJ: right now, we would the say that the two projects that really pushed our boundaries have been the exhibition ‘ two or three things I know about provo ‘, and the graphic identity of the whitney museum . these two projects have been the most satisfying, in the sense that they both required us to function to our full abilities. writing, reading, researching, designing for printed matter and signage, even working with sound and moving image – in both projects, we did all that.

we worked on both projects during the same period (the years of 2011 and 2012), and in retrospect, they have a lot in common. sure, at first sight, they seem worlds apart – developing the graphic identity for the whitney was a very strict process, involving dozens of meetings and presentations, while curating ‘two or three things I know about provo’ was a much more improvised, low-budget affair; and while ‘two or three things’ dealt with a subject that was very close to our heart, our role at the whitney project was basically that of relative outsiders – but despite these differences, both projects did require the same level of energy, the same kind of intensity.

also, both projects were very city-specific. ‘two or three things’ was an exhibition about provo, an anarchist movement that was very much shaped by the city of amsterdam (by the same token, amsterdam was shaped by provo). and the graphic identity of the whitney was very much grounded in the city of new york – in the sense that, during the design process, it became clear to us that the shape of the ‘zigzag’ could refer to things such as the ziggurat-shape of the architecture (of both the current and future building of the whitney), or the iconic fire-escape stairs in the streets of new york, or the zigzag-like path of the whitney museum through manhattan, throughout the years. also, we did a lot of research into the history of the whitney museum, and the history of american modernism in general – the specific moment that europe stopped being the center of modern art, and new york became the new capital. so, in the whitney project as well as in ‘two or three things’, we really tried to explore this notion of ‘city-specificity’.

DB: helvetica features frequently in your portfolio – is there a reason why you find yourself drawn to using this typeface for many different purposes? and was there a reason why you decided not to use the typeface in your recent re-design of the whitney identity?

EJ: it’s obviously not true that we always use helvetica – but nevertheless, we can’t deny that the late-modernist graphic landscape in which we grew up (we’re talking about the netherlands in the ’70s here) had a big influence on us. as a consequence, we feel as if this late-modernist vocabulary (of which helvetica is undeniably a part) has become our authentic language, our mother tongue. it’s our everyday way of talking, our natural tone of voice. and it’s only logical that this late-modernist dialect can be detected all throughout our work. we’re simply not the kind of people who feel it’s necessary to suppress one’s own dialect.

but that doesn’t mean we always use the same typeface. especially when you look at the graphic identities we designed for museums and cultural institutes, you’ll notice that we have used various typefaces, often for very specific conceptual reasons. for example, for the graphic identity we designed in 2004 for stedelijk museum CS (SMCS), we specifically used univers, to refer to the history of the institute. and for the graphic identity we created in 2007 for le cent quatre (104), we used futura, so that the 104 logo could really be ’embedded’ in the typeface. in other words, it’s a total myth that we always use helvetica – but it’s an amusing myth, we have to admit.

as for the specific version of neue haas grotesk (NHG) that we used for the graphic identity of the whitney… we met christian schwartz back in 2009, during a type conference in wellington, new zealand; and during our conversation, christian mentioned the version of nhg he was working on. two years later, when we started to work on the whitney, we remembered this conversation, and realized that NHG might be the right typeface for this project.

we thought there was quite a fascinating link to be found between the two projects. on the one hand, there’s christian schwartz, an american designer working on his interpretation of an european typeface. and on the other hand, there’s us, a european design studio, working on our interpretation of the graphic identity of an american museum. we saw a really intriguing parallel there, an interesting ‘zigzag’ between europe and the united states. we figured this could be an interesting extra little storyline to add to the graphic identity, as a sort of sub-sub-plot.

there were also more pragmatic reasons to use NHG. it’s a typeface that comes with a very wide variety of weights, style and special characters – it can be used for all kinds of purposes (text, display, etc.), while still maintaining a consistent, graphic tone. (it was especially important for us that the word ‘whitney’ would appear in the same typeface as the headline text, and the body text – we didn’t want a logo that would behave as a sort of alien element, completely separated from the rest of the text).

as it turned out, hilary greenbaum, head of the design department of the whitney, knew christian schwartz personally, which also turned out to be a really happy coincidence. it was an ideal situation, as the design department could contact christian schwartz directly, to work out technical and practical details (for example, for the whitney, christian worked on a special digital version of NHG, which is used on the whitney website).

DB: do you think it’s important for a graphic designer to be able to draw?

EJ: that fully depends on one’s definition of drawing. in a way, we would argue that creating a typographic composition is a form of drawing as well – in the same way that drawing is essentially a form of writing. what is interesting about graphic design is exactly the fact that it is a field in which it is impossible to distinguish between writing and drawing, between the verbal and the visual.

this is already encapsulated in the etymology of the word ‘graphic’ – originally, the word is derived from the proto-indo-european base-word ‘grebh’, which simply means ‘to carve’ or ‘to scratch’; but in greek times, the word ‘graphikos’ referred both to the act of drawing and writing. in a sense, we do believe that the current practice of graphic design still refers to this classic notion – the idea that writing is a form of drawing, and drawing is a form of writing.

DB: what do you think the most significant developments in graphic design have been in the last five years?

EJ: the crisis we currently find ourselves in. and we’re not talking about an aesthetic or conceptual crisis in graphic design – in fact, we think the work created by young graphic designers nowadays is more interesting than it was in previous decades. we’re really talking about the economic and political crisis that is taking place in society at large. and obviously, this crisis has a very dramatic effect on the current cultural landscape.

there used to be a time when cultural institutes and museums would really support independent studios, and young designers. but nowadays (mainly because of the whole mixture of neo-liberalism, privatization and populism that is currently forced upon us), a lot of cultural institutes (even the smaller ones) simply decide to play it safe, and choose to work with large branding and advertising agencies instead. in turn, these large advertising agencies then just hire some young designers, to do the ‘cultural work’ for them – and just discard these young designers after the work is done. after all, for these large agencies, these cultural projects serve primarily to add some ‘depth’ to their corporate portfolios – but they wouldn’t want to actually invest in those cultural projects, in any intellectual or ideological way.   

we feel there’s a really strange discrepancy going on – while young designers seem to be getting more and more intellectual and progressive, a lot of cultural institutes are actually trying to achieve a more populist tone, and getting more conservative. they seem to move in opposite directions – and we have no idea how this rift can ever be solved.

young designers are currently producing a lot of very interesting work – but this production takes place on a more subcultural, isolated level: in the spheres of self-publishing, small exhibitions, underground projects. to survive, these young designers are either forced to work (or worse, to intern for free) for large corporate agencies, or they have to find a ‘day-time job’, outside of the field of graphic design. there seem to be fewer and fewer opportunities nowadays for young designers to just start their own small, independent studios, and inject their ideas straight into the public space – and we think that’s a real shame.

in harsh times like these, we think it’s really important for independent designers and small studios to stick together, and keep an open mind towards each other. above all, we should maintain some sense of solidarity, of dignity. we might have our aesthetic or conceptual differences, but in the end, we’re all in the same boat. it’s so easy to constantly attack each other, but all this energy can be better put to use trying to actually survive.

DB: besides graphic design / visual communication what are each of you passionate about?

EJ: music plays a large role in our life, and in our work. in previous interviews, we often mention the influence of punk – although we were too young to actively participate in the original punk explosion of 1977, we could still hear the echoes of this explosion throughout the ’80s, and it really inspired us. as teenagers, we were involved in all kinds of post-punk subcultures (two-tone ska, psychobilly, new wave, garage rock, mod, american hardcore, etc.), and all these movements shaped us in the most profound way. (in fact, it were post-punk relics such as record sleeves, buttons/badges, patches, DIY fanzines, mix-tapes, t-shirts and xeroxed mini-comics that made us aware of graphic design in the first place).

so in our work, we really try to synthesize all these (seemingly conflicting) influences: the language of late-modernism of the ’70s (which shaped us in an almost subconscious way, during our childhood years) and the post-punk landscape of the ’80s (which inspired us in a much more explicit way, during our teenage years). during the ’90s, we were in our twenties, and went to art academy while grunge was going on, which left some traces as well (don’t forget that our studio is named after a ’90s album by sonic youth).

DB: is there any piece of advice you’ve been given that you remember often?

an advice that comes to mind is ‘never excuse, never explain’, which isn’t really an advice that someone actually gave to us – it’s more a sort of general remark we once came across. the quote is attributed to a lot of different people (sometimes also appearing as ‘never complain, never explain’), and we actually wouldn’t know if we’d consider it ‘good’ or ‘bad’ advice. but for some reason, we have been thinking a lot about this phrase, lately.

we write a lot about our work – not as an explanation, and certainly not as an excuse, but more because the activity of writing enables us to reflect on our own work, to look at our work from a bit of a distance. it’s really just a way of organizing our own thoughts. so when, around 2005, we decided to make our first proper website, we thought it would be interesting to include texts like these. mainly because we don’t necessarily see our website as a portfolio, attracting possible clients – we see it more as a diary, or a personal archive. in fact, our texts would sooner scare away clients than attract them. our website was always intended for the tiny group of people who were really interested in our work, in the stories behind it. our writing, our tone of voice, is simply not for everyone – it’s a ‘stream-of-consciousness’, long-winding, free-associating way of talking. the simple truth is, we aren’t proper writers, or professional academics, or real intellectuals – for us, the texts are just by-products of the labour of design. nothing more (but certainly nothing less). so in that sense, we feel we have nothing to be embarrassed about.

on the other hand, we also realize that, by writing, we are basically handing out ammunition to our critics. it’s funny – many critics always argue that ‘designers should write more’, but the moment you actually write a text, critics are the first to immediately tear it apart, isolating every single sentence to ridicule your text. so we know we are making ourselves very vulnerable with these texts.

that’s why, sometimes, the idea of simply not writing anymore sounds very attractive. when we hear about authors or musicians who never do interviews, and never appear in public – we always find that quite fascinating. it sometimes makes us doubt whether we did the right thing, being so open and honest about our practice from the very beginning.

it seems too late to change direction now – although we sometimes do fantasize about removing all text from our website. we probably won’t do this anytime soon – but the people who are indeed interested in our texts, might start storing them, just to be on the safe side.

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Notes on Experimental Jetset

Experimental Jetset

Experimental Jetset is an Amsterdam-based, three-person graphic design collective, consisting of Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers, and Danny van den Dungen. They have been designing posters and flyers for Paradiso since 1996, and were recently also responsible for the development of Paradiso's overall graphic language.

For the ’50 Posters Project’, Experimental Jetset has ‘re-approriated’ the perforated template that they designed in 1996 (and re-designed in 2010) for Paradiso, and filled this template with a classic quote by Baudrillard – forging a link between Paradiso, 1968, and the notion of screen-printed posters (and concert-posters) in general.

“Walls and words, screen-printed posters and hand-made flyers, were the true revolutionary media in May 1968. The streets where speech started and was exchanged; everything that is an immediate inscription, given and transferred. Speech and response, moving in the same time and in the same place, reciprocal and antagonistic.” – Jean Baudrillard, 1972

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This is why Experimental Jetset is a living part of typographic history

Some upcoming events. First of all, we’re working on a ‘graphic intervention’ for an exhibition that will take place at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich – the opening will take place on April 16, 2015. Secondly, we designed five Provo-related posters as a contribution to Yes Yes Yes, a group show that will open on April 18, at Colli in Rome. And finally, around May 1, the Whitney Museum will re-open at its new location – featuring a graphic identity that we designed in 2012 (and that has been maintained by the Whitney’s in-house design team ever since). In fact, on the occasion of the opening, we’ve been asked to create some new work for the Whitney – more about that later.” This is just one of the many updates Experimental Jetset posted on their website regarding their agenda for the first half of 2015 and obviously productivity is not something this team of three lacks in.

Consisting of Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen this small, independent, Amsterdam-based graphic design studio was established back in 1997. The trio, who met and collaborated during their studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy formed Experimental Jetset and since the beginning of their adventures in the world of the letters, they decided to focus on printed matter and site-specific installations. Best known for their typographic solutions have completed projects as diverse as the new graphic identity for the Whitney Museum of American Art (2013), to the iconic ‘ John & Paul & Ringo & George ’ t-shirt print (2001).

“We want our work to become a part of reality, not an imitation of it”

Although they describe their work as “scavenging the ruins of Modernism ”, Experimental Jetset’s graphic design output belongs to our times. Conscious “of its origins and place in design history” they see their work as an archive of influences. From the iconic poster by Dutch cartoon artist Bernard Willem Holtrop with a reversed lower case “A” that inspired the trio for its “sharp and clear design but contrarian element”, through the No Wave post-punk sub-culture that sprung up in New York City in the late 1970s and early 80s to the relationship between pop culture and the avant-garde – exemplified, for example, by the record sleeve of The Beatles’ White Album  designed by pop artist Richard Hamilton in 1968, everything is an inspiration.

“For us, a fascination with graphic design started with stuff like record sleeves, music magazines, fanzines and band t-shirts”, says Van den Dungen. “That got us interested in graphic design in the first place and I think a lot of the work that we do is still related to that. There is always this sense that we referring to those groups or movements.” Provo was just one of them. The Dutch counterculture movement, which Stolk’s father was a founding member of was focused on provoking violent responses from authorities using non-violent action and it was a family issue for her. After all, “since mainstream printers did not want to print the subversive material of the movement, activism forced her father to become a printer.” 

Although they have become synonymous with the use of Helvetica, Stolk wants to set the record straight. “We actually hate Helvetica”, she says.

Owing a huge debt to Dutch graphic designers such as Wim Crouwel and other influential thinkers and visual disruptors alike (French Marxist theorist Guy Debord, Italian artist Lucio Fontana, French film director Jean-Luc Godard or Stanley Kubrick’s “relentless merciless aesthetic”), Experimental Jetset are not interested in reproducing reality. “We want our work to become a part of reality, not an imitation of it” they say. “We try to make the viewer aware of the reality of representation by revealing the methods of reproduction and of printing”.

Obsessed with details, with an almost “neurotic desire to control even the smallest elements in our work for better or for worse” Experimental Jetset porftolio is influenced by their involvement as teenagers in the 1980s with the “post-punk sub-cultures such as New Wave, Psychobilly, 2 Tone and Mod”, notes Brinkers. And although they have become synonymous with the use of Helvetica typeface Stolk wants to set the record straight. “We actually hate Helvetica”, she says. “If anything we see it as more of a natural tone of voice as part of our everyday vocabulary. We are not the sort of actors who speak in a different voice or put on another mask every time we play another role”, she explains. “We basically signed our own death sentence – in Helvetica obviously!” she commented on their appearance in Gary Hustwit’s documentary about the over popular font. Maybe the fact that the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired back in 2007 a large selection of their work in 2007 for inclusion in the museum’s permanent collection will make you acknowledge that Experimental Jetset are a living part of today’s typographic history but that is merely an understatement.

Tags/ inspiration , modernism , moma , stanley kubrick , experimental jetset , marieke stolk , erwin brinkers , danny van den dungen , dutch , whitney museum , museum für gestaltung , jean-luc godard , the beatles

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Pop, subcultures and the future of graphic design: an interview with Experimental Jetset

Forming in 1997 and united by a love of post-punk music and aesthetics, Amsterdam-based graphic design studio Experimental Jetset went on to become one of the most important and influential practices of the past 20 years. Even those outside of the graphic design bubble will have seen their work: this is the gang behind that oft-plagiarised John & Paul & Ringo & George T-shirt, set out in Helvetica and reinventing the band top in doing so. The three founding members Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen took the studio’s name from 1994’s Sonic Youth album Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (more on that story here ), and those alternative pop culture references still loom large. Nearly two decades since forming, Experimental Jetset’s installation works and graphics have now been housed in the likes of the Stedelijk Museum, Centre Pompidou, Dutch Post Group and New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

As well as client work, the trio has also taught at Amsterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Arnhem’s Artez and Werkplaats Typografie. Just before the team takes a few months off for the summer, we spoke to them about post-punk, countercultural influences and the changes they’ve seen in the Dutch graphic design scene.

Experimental Jetset: Statement&CounterStatement2015

How has your work been shaped by music?

Well, most importantly it was our love of music (and our interest in subcultures such as psychobilly, mod and garage rock) that made us aware of graphic design in the first place, back in the 1980s.

But another way in which we’ve been shaped by music is through our interest in the model of the rock band. A rock band is a very tight socio-economic unit: just two, three or four people, sharing one collective artistic language. For us, this is a much more interesting model than the mainstream design studio, which has a very typical boss/workers hierarchy: “junior” and “senior” designers, interns and directors, “creative” and “administrative” people. We really dislike these traditional separations; we think they create a certain alienation from the end-product.

What we like about the band model is the fact that a band is small enough for every member to feel involved and responsible, but large enough to have the benefits of a collective way of working.

Experimental Jetset: Word-Things in Time-Space (detail), 2016. Installation at Riot Ghent

So the model of the rock band is something we have always been interested in. The t-shirt print we created in 2001 (John & Paul & Ringo & George) can be seen as an example of that. The fact that we named our studio after an album by Sonic Youth, Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, seems relevant as well, in that regard. Also, the first installation we ever created, at SMBA (Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam), back in 1998, was titled Black Metal Machine and revolved around a fictional band. So it’s safe to say this theme has always played a large part in our work, from the very beginning. 

"We find this whole notion of the 'graphic designer as a rock star' completely repulsive." Experimental Jetset

However – when we talk about the model of the rock band, we don’t mean this whole notion of the “graphic designer as a rock star” – that’s an idea that we find completely repulsive. We really hate celebrity culture. For us, the model of the band goes totally against the notion of celebrity. In its ideal form, the band becomes an entity which allows the member to become anonymous. It’s the notion of the collective, not of the individual, that matters to us. 

It feels to me that the post-punk ideas and aesthetics that have influenced you are hard to pin down – or at least more so than straight-up punk, for instance. Can you tell me a little more about what you feel post-punk means to you, and how it shaped your output?

The whole notion of post-punk has probably been our most important inspiration, throughout the years. As we already mentioned in previous interviews – it is through all the various post-punk subcultures in which we were involved (as kids growing up in the 80s) that we became interested in graphic design in the first place. Psychobilly, two-tone ska, new wave, mod, oi, industrial noise, garage rock, skate punk, US hardcore – it was subcultures like these that made us aware of this whole graphic sphere of band logos, record sleeves, fanzines, mini comics, mail art, mix tapes, T-shirt prints, buttons, badges, patches, etc. In a lot of our work, we are still referring to exactly this graphic sphere. 

Experimental Jetset: Space Embodied: The Russian Art of Movement’ (2016) Photo (installation view / detail) by Johannes Schwartz

On top of that, a lot of post-punk subcultures used to have this added element of “social mobility” – which is hard to explain, but what we mean is simply this: subcultures can sometimes function as “gateways”, enabling kids to escape from certain fixed social milieus. As working-class teens, growing up in non-academic surroundings, it was through subcultures such as punk and new wave that we first learned about movements such as Surrealism, Futurism and Dada. In that sense, post-punk was a form of education for us.

To give a very banal example of this – the first time we heard about Bertolt Brecht was actually through psychobilly band King Kurt, who once did a cover version of ‘Mack the Knife’ (originally by Brecht and Weill), back in the mid-80s. So yeah, this is just one quick, random example – but you get the idea.

In short – if it wasn’t for post-punk, we would have never gathered the courage and self-respect needed to apply for art school, and to be involved in something as “artistic” as graphic design.  

But back to your question… Since it was through punk and new wave that we first learned about movements such as Surrealism, Futurism and Dada, post-punk has become somewhat of a “meta-influence”. It is, simply put, the influence through which we filter all other influences. Like a prism or lens, so to speak.

For example – recently, we were working on the spatial design (and graphic design) of Space Embodied: The Russian Art of Movement, 1920–1930, an exhibition that’s currently taking place at Het Nieuwe Instituut ( HNI ) in Rotterdam; and while working on that project, we realised just how much of our thinking about Constructivism has been shaped by 80s post-punk culture.

When it comes to Constructivism, the early 80s (and late 70s) is of course a really interesting period, as a lot of the post-punk aesthetics (the graphic language of new wave, synth-pop, industrial music, etc.) referred quite openly to Russian avant-garde movements (Productivism, Suprematism, Kubo-Futurism, LEF , Agit-Prop, Zaum, etc.).

A very early example is of course Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine but you can also look at record sleeves designed by Neville Brody, Bazooka, Barney Bubbles, Malcolm Garrett, JG Thirlwell (Foetus), New Collective Studio ( NSK /Laibach), Jean-Paul Goude, Peter Saville, etc.

This was a time when pop-culture, post-punk (and gay/queer) subcultures, Trotskyist politics and Constructivist aesthetics really merged, resulting in a very interesting common language. A well-known example would be The Communards . But you could also think of more subcultural bands, like mod/soul outfit The Redskins, or industrial collective Test Dept.

In that same vein, let’s not forget the Red Wedge logo, created by Neville Brody in 1985. And obviously, we’re also thinking here of David King (who sadly recently passed away), and the work he did for the Anti-Nazi League (and related organisations such as Rock Against Racism). 

Anyway – these are just some quick examples, from the top of our heads. But the point we want to make is simply this – our way of thinking about Constructivism is very much shaped by the 80s post-punk surroundings in which we grew up. 

So when we are referring (in an exhibition such as Space Embodied for example) to that whole language of Constructivism, our interpretation is not academic. Our interpretation is much more pop-damaged, much more blackened, much more subcultured.

How would you describe the Dutch approach to graphic design? How has it changed since you formed in 1997?

A lot has changed over the last few decades. 

From the end of World War II up until the 1990s, the Netherlands have been a (more or less) social-democratic country, leaning (culturally and socially) to the left. This was also reflected in graphic design — in general, graphic design was regarded as the embodiment of a certain socialist, modernist ideal: the synthesis of art and the everyday. Society as a Gesamtkunstwerk .

Within this atmosphere, graphic design was considered to be a public platform, not only for utilitarian communication, but also for authorship, and self-expression. The graphic designer was allowed (or better said, expected) to explore the artistic dimension of the medium to the fullest. This meant that, for most designers, there was no real separation yet between “autonomous work” and “commissioned work”: the functionality of a piece of design was also measured by its ability to push certain boundaries, to challenge expectations — but all within the realm of the public, as an integral part of society. 

Experimental Jetset: Provo Station (detail), 2016, at GfZK Leipzig.

However, since the turn of the millennium, Dutch society has slowly transformed itself, from a Scandinavia-style welfare state into a more Anglo-Saxon-style neo-liberal market economy. And this process of dismantling the welfare state has had an immediate effect on graphic design. Most of the public and cultural infrastructure has been destroyed, or will be destroyed soon. Everything has been privatised, commercialised, opened to the market. Most institutes (even the so-called ‘cultural’ institutes) have stopped working with independent designers or small studios, and are collaborating more and more with large communication and advertising agencies. The whole notion of social-democratic design has disappeared, to make way for more neo-liberal concepts such as branding, advertising and marketing. A catastrophic state of affairs, obviously.

Experimental Jetset: Provo Station (detail), 2016, at GfZK Leipzig

As a result, a lot of young, aspiring graphic designers have been pushed out of the public realm, and forced into a much more isolated and hidden infrastructure – an infrastructure of art practices, master courses, post-graduate programs, summer schools, book fairs, zine libraries, small exhibition spaces, self-publishing, etc. It seems that only there, these young designers can exercise the authorship and self-expression that cannot longer be exercised by them in the public space.

On the one hand, you can see this as a really exciting development – all these young people pushing design into completely new, esoteric directions. Some might argue that this can’t even be considered ‘design’ anymore, but we disagree. In a way, we think that what these young people are doing is still closer to ‘proper’ modern graphic design (as in, searching for the synthesis of art and the everyday) than practices such as branding and advertising are. So, we have nothing but respect for these young designers, dwelling in the art underground – they are keeping the spirit of modern graphic design alive.

But on the other hand, it also makes us very sad. We would really like to see these young designers being allowed to manifest themselves in more public spaces. For example – we graduated in 1997, and by 1998 we already designed a mass-produced postage stamp for the Dutch Mail. So, even as very young graphic designers, we were immediately offered a very large, public platform. It makes us sad that a lot of young designers won’t have a chance to make such a public gesture anymore. Maybe as unpaid interns for larger agencies – but not as independent, starting designers. 

So we can’t blame all these young, talented people for withdrawing from mainstream graphic design, and trying their luck in more isolated, art-related practices. It makes us extremely sad, but we can totally understand them.

As for the future – well, thinking about the future, we can’t help but think of that famous Gramsci quote, about being a “pessimist of the mind, and an optimist of the will”. Graphic design won’t be restored until the whole political climate changes. And sadly, social-democratic or socialist alternatives seem almost impossible to envision right now. There are sometimes tiny glimmers of hope on the horizon – but in general, it seems that we will be stuck in a neo-liberal reality for the time being. It’s a nightmare.

But on a more optimistic note – if the political climate does finally change, it means that there are legions of young designers, waiting on the sidelines, ready to take-over. To speak with The Exploited – they truly are the troops of tomorrow.

Experimental Jetset: Left of the International (detail), 2015, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

What projects have you got coming up?

As we’re writing this, it’s the longest day of the year – and the first day of our summer break. We really need it. The first few months of 2016 were so extremely, intensely busy – we’re completely exhausted.

But to answer your question… Right after the holidays, there are three publications we have to work on – a book on the Amsterdam-based architecture studio EventArchitectuur (to be pusblished by Birkhaüser), a catalogue on the work of the Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout (to be published by Wiels and Walther König Verlag), and the latest installment of EP (to be published by Sternberg Press). After the summer, we’ll also continue working on the development of a multiple that will be released later this year, by The Thing Quarterly ( TTQ ) in San Francisco.

There might also be some collaborations coming up with cultural institutes in Eastern Europe – very exciting, and we keep our fingers crossed for that. Then there are some upcoming projects involving our good friend (and brilliant photographer) Johannes Schwartz. Maybe another collaboration with Dutch artist Melanie Bonajo. We’ll also continue teaching at Werkplaats Typografie (Arnhem). And we probably forgot half of it. 

So yeah – we’ve got some busy months ahead. But first, we need a good summer holiday!

Experimental Jetset: Statement & CounterStatement, 2015

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About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

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Why everything starts with Helvetica for Experimental Jetset

The reclusive, obsessive Dutch trio discuss how the neutral typeface has paradoxically come to define them.

The clean lines, monochrome colour palette and Helvetica-flavoured simplicity of Experimental Jetset 's body of graphic design work can be deceptive. For beneath every bold geometric shape and clever twist of wordplay you'll find a rich layer of thought-provoking concepts and often obscure cultural touchpoints that reward further exploration.

In some cases, these references are subtle enough to be missed by all but the most attentive of viewers, and require some level of explanation - and the studio often delves into these things in a great deal of depth through fascinating essay-like write-ups on its website. But these are always about the work, and all too rarely about the people behind it.

Experimental Jetset comprises Danny van den Dungen, Marieke Stolk and Erwin Brinkers - but unless you're fortunate enough to catch the trio face-to-face, it's rare that an individual voice breaks from the collective. Emails are signed either with all three names, or simply 'EJ'. Fortunately, Computer Arts had the chance to sit down with Van den Dungen, Stolk and Brinkers at the end of February, following an engaging talk at Design Indaba about their creative influences.

Before we even start, Stolk ponders: "Would it not be easier to do this via email?" She's concerned that they may come across as too abrupt: after all, the trio like to put almost as much thought into their responses as they do their work.

Pack mentality

We're sitting on a balcony outside the conference venue; Van den Dungen's girlfriend joins us briefly, bringing a couple of plates of buffet salad. As the trio tuck in, they begin to relax and we begin by discussing how the three of them function as a unit.

"We try to do everything collaboratively," asserts Brinkers. "We tend to work on the same thing as much as possible, because we think we're really a unit of graphic designers, rather than three separate ones." Although not a football fan, unlike many of his compatriots, Van den Dungen reaches for a familiar Dutch sporting metaphor to continue Brinkers' theme: "We sometimes compare it to Total Football," he grins. "We once saw an interview with Johan Cruyff, where he was explaining this system where every player is able to play each other's role. That's something we aspire to."

Experimental Jetset's Amsterdam-based studio is around 70 square metres; small enough to be intimate but large enough to keep the trio - who have been working together for 17 years, since studying together at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie - from treading on each other's toes. "If we were a studio in New York, we'd probably have 20 square metres," Stolk points out. "It's really all a question of context. For me, it's not the amount of space we have but the amount of time we've been working together that's more worrying."

Certainly it helps to explain how three independent minds can function with such a unified sense of purpose. "Everybody does have different interests," insists Van den Dungen. "It's not that we're three versions of the same designer, it's more like we're different aspects of the same designer maybe. Everybody brings something else to the table." Perhaps the emails being signed 'EJ' acknowledge the studio almost as a fourth personality, greater than the sum of its parts? "Sometimes you look at work as if you were not the one that made it," confirms Stolk.

"Because we create it with all three of us, it's like this other entity. Not that we don't feel responsible, of course - we put our names on it, after all - but it's still all three of our names," she continues. "It's quite abstract, and I think that's quite pleasant."

Obsession by design

The three designers are influenced by the music of The Beatles and The Jam, as well as the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Stanley Kubrick - with whom Experimental Jetset shares an obsessive attention to detail. We move on to discuss how that perfectionism manifests itself.

"During the [Design Indaba] lectures there was a lot of talk about mistakes, which is something that we're also interested in," considers Van den Dungen. "At the same time, we think that mistakes only exist if you try to achieve perfection." Brinkers interjects: "If making mistakes is your goal, it's not a mistake anymore," he reasons. "That tragedy of failure is only beautiful if you strive for that idea of perfection. There's something about that struggle of trying to achieve something, when you know you will never get there."

Besides Kubrick, there's another cinematic reference point that can be found woven throughout the studio's body of work - the 1966 film Blow Up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. "It's a film about art, memory, photography, music, film, design and life itself," Van den Dungen explains. "The movie also hints at the existential void, the terrifying nothingness."

Of course, compared to the likes of Kubrick or The Beatles, references to Antonioni could pass the average viewer by. Perhaps in some cases, these allusions are as much for the trio's own personal satisfaction as anything else? "Yes," confirms Stolk with a wry smile, leaving Van den Dungen to elaborate.

"We like to compare it to a meal," he explains. "Sometimes you don't know the exact ingredients, but you can still taste them. Even if you don't exactly get the reference, you can understand that it's rooted in something."

Another obscure influence from the 1960s is the Brazilian artistic movement Tropicália. Anyone curious to know more about such things can indulge in some of the explanations on the Experimental Jetset website, or "long, winding, boring stories" as Van den Dungen mischievously calls them. But these layers of allusions aren't about self-indulgence: "It's not like we just add in those references. You need them to create the work," he insists. "It's not some kind of superfluous layer on top of it, we cannot get it out."

Indeed, in some cases the references are themselves the subject of the work - as was the case for the 2003 poster Zang! Tumb Tumb, which remixed John Lennon and Yoko Ono's War Is Over poster using the onomatopoeic words of the Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, intended to evoke the sound of falling bombs.

Binding all of these layers together is the visual style of Dutch modernism, which surrounded all three designers during their formative years, and which colours everything their studio creates. Or, more accurately, removes colour from it, in favour of stark black sans-serif type on pure white. "It's our language," shrugs Brinkers. "It's what you say with it that matters."

So rooted is Experimental Jetset's signature style in the graphic language of the studio's forebears, particularly the great Wim Crouwel, that some reactions have been negative. "Since the beginning of our career we've been criticised - ridiculed, even - by a lot of people who see us as a nostalgic, almost retro thing," confesses Van den Dungen. "But we were brought up in this language, and we have a certain right to do our own thing with it."

Tasked in 2004 with creating a graphic identity for the Stedelijk Museum's temporary location in Amsterdam, for instance, Experimental Jetset made reference to Crouwel's 'SM' logo, but also used an Airmail pattern to allude to the venue's former use as a Dutch Post distribution centre.

"We wanted to refer explicitly to those two social democratic institutions - historically two of the most important commissioners of design in the Netherlands - and also react to the fact that both of them at the time were in the process of being privatised."

Deceptive neutrality

Ironically, one of the most distinctive features of the graphic palette with which the studio paints is a typeface famed for its neutrality, and that the trio selected because they wanted the conversation to be about the idea, not the font in which it's set. Of course, being interviewed for a documentary about everyone's favourite Swiss sans serif can't have helped.

"Helvetica is our starting point; it's like a blank piece of paper," reflects Brinkers. Stolk goes on to explain how, when the three of them graduated in 1997, typefaces were beginning to proliferate and distract designers from the concept at hand, a phenomenon they were keen to avoid.

"The paradox is really interesting," muses Van den Dungen. "It's like an architect using a really standardised, pre-fab element, and still trying to make it their own. If it's your handwriting, but at the same time it's used by millions of companies all over the world, then what exactly is it that's your handwriting?"

The potential social and political influence of design fascinates Experimental Jetset as much as its cultural value - although, this tends to translate into a particular aesthetic, packed with layers for viewers to unpack, rather than being more campaign-driven.

"Some graphic designers want to provide answers, and some really want to ask questions," muses Brinkers, setting up Stolk's closing thoughts nicely. "Interpretation is very important," she adds. "We try to leave things open for other people to fill in. We don't want to tell people what to think, but we do want to encourage them to think."

This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 227.

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Experimental Jetset

NAiM Re-Action 2011

32 ½ x 46 in. (81 x 117 cm)

Condition: Excellent

Amsterdam graphic design studio Experimental Jetset was founded in 1997 by Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen. The designers describe their print and installation work as “turning language into objects”. Influences include the rigorously modernist principles of 20th-century Dutch graphic design (they often use Helvetica, a treasured modernist typeface) as well as the more free-wheeling, DIY design sensibilities of the punk movement. 

In 2019, The Museum of Modern Art in New York commissioned Experimental Jetset to create an installation in their café for the reopening of the museum. MoMA also holds a large collection of the studio’s posters and other printed work in its permanent collection. 

Since 1997, Experimental Jetset has designed the graphic identity for the Maastricht-based architecture institute NAiM/Bureau Europa. They designed this typographic poster for the institute’s exhibition on sustainable architecture. 

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