Rays of light amid the gloom
30 11 09 From the New York Times:Some things seem doomed in the digital age, and the atlas is one. Who needs to plow through a book to track down a map, when you can call it up within seconds on Google Maps? An online map is also likelier to be up-to-date than the printed one, which could have been published years ago. Put like that, the prognosis doesn’t look great, but that’s for traditional atlases, not the new ones developed by Joost Grootens, a Dutch designer. By reassessing the type of information we might like to find in an atlas, and experimenting with different ways of depicting it, Mr. Grootens has created a beautiful series of books that give us a richer, clearer picture of the places we are looking up than we ever could hope to find on the Internet. Thanks to his latest book, the Vinex Atlas, Mr. Grootens on Sunday was awarded the Netherlands’ most prestigious design award, the Rotterdam Design Prize.
Historically, [The Netherlands] has excelled in graphic design, and continues to do so thanks to Mr. Grootens and his peers, like Experimental Jetset, Mevis & Van Deursen and Irma Boom. Recently it has emerged as a force in product design too, helped by Eindhoven, Droog and the rest of the design system. If you compiled a checklist of the things that are likely to foster a healthy design culture, the Netherlands would be one of the few countries to tick every box. Government grants for young designers. Cheap studios. Great design collections in museums, like the Boijmans in Rotterdam and Stedelijk in Amsterdam. Enlightened manufacturers, such as Royal Tichelaar Makkum (another Rotterdam prize nominee) and Moooi, the furniture company launched by Philippe Starck’s Dutch understudy, Marcel Wanders. All of this has created a vibrant design scene that has enabled Dutch designers to thrive and attracted talented foreigners.
There are concerns that the Netherlands is ill-equipped to adapt to the changes now sweeping through design. This is a global issue. Designers everywhere are struggling to redefine their role as the environmental and economic crises deepen, but that process need not necessarily be negative. Another issue is whether the Dutch will be as adept at the new design disciplines, such as service design and social design, which apply the principles of design thinking to a range of problems, as at they have been at the traditional process of creating beautiful objects and imagery. In principle there is no reason why they shouldn’t, but the United States has taken the lead in service design, and Britain and Scandinavia in social design. Despite the gloom inside the Netherlands, outsiders are more optimistic about the prospects for Dutch design. “Crisis? You’ve got to be kidding me.” Paola Antonelli, senior curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, said laughing. “They should get over themselves, although I guess it’s the self-criticism that makes them so good.”
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