This morning we had the absolute pleasure of graphic design legend Wim Crouwel’s presence at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication.
He spoke for around an hour on his inspirations in design, and his career to date, showing some of the pieces of work that have long-since established him as one of the all-time greats in graphic design.
Above – Wim Crouwel talking through one of his famous designs.
Still full of life and highly energetic, his presentation kept the packed lecture theatre gripped with some of his fantastic quotes (some raising the theatre into roars of laughter!);
On his Success-
“You need to have some luck”
“It was the right moment to meet the right people”
On his work-
“I always try to translate the typography with the style of the artist”
“I took the idea from the Da Vinci painting (the Vitruvian Man), but I left the man out!”
“This is the most unreadable poster I ever did!”
“When you grow old, all your identities get replaced by modern ones!”
On technology-
“I cannot work with the mice!”
Wim also answered my question in a brilliant way too I thought…
Me – “Most of your work is highly functional, but a lot of it also pushes the boundaries of legibility. How do you tend to deal with both legibility and the visual aesthetic at the same time? Do you have to hold your hands up sometimes and accept compromising one for the other?”
Wim – “I always work with a system that dictates what I can and cannot do. The grid is like a football pitch, it can be a beautiful play sometimes, but other times it can be dull and grey, I usually realise afterwards that a grey design could have been beautiful if i’d have done this or this, but by then it has been done!”
Wim Crouwel is a fantastic speaker, and will tomorrow be holding a talk for I.S.T.D – sure to be a full house!
