KAREL MARTENS ABSTRACT Dutch typographic designer Karel Martens is one of the most influential and enduring designers alive in the Netherlands today His body of work spans over 50 years and manages to maintain a freshness and timeless appeal In 1996 he was awarded the Dr H A Heineken Award the top graphic design award in Holland He is the founder of the Werkplaats Typografie a post graduate graphic design school in Arnhem NL as well as a lecturer at theYale School of Graphic Design and the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastrict NL Karel Martens work is often regarded as defining dutch design and many of the aesthetic and conceptual characteristics he employs have been widely appropriated by the design community in NL and abroad KAREL MARTENS BACKGROUND 1939 Born 1970s Works for Kluwer conglomerate and designs large series of book covers 1977 Begins teaching in Arnhem contributes to Arnhem Typography 1990 Takes over design of Oase Architectural Journal 1994 Joins Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht 1996 Wins Dr A H Heineken Prize for Art publishes Printed Matter 1997 Founds Werkplaats Typografie with Armand Mevis 2004 Publishes Counterprint KAREL MARTENS DESCRIPTION Karel Martens earliest works were his book covers for an Arnhem based publishing house They exhibit simple clean swiss typography an emphasis on legibility and the use of repeated simple geometric shapes His later covers begin to experiment with imagery However this is kept very minimal and simple KAREL MARTENS DESCRIPTION One of Karel Martens most enduring trend setting projects was his design for a series of dutch phone cards The idea is simply the joy of seeing what happens with colors when they overlap in typography The numbering system is derived from the dutch national anthem where each word is coded into a series of numbers KAREL MARTENS DESCRIPTION In 1990 KM took over the design of the architectural journal Oase The magazines editor intended for KM to give the design as a project to students but instead Martens used it as formal playground for experimentation with his own work This is where he first began his monoprint works inspired by nul group aesthetics KAREL MARTENS SUBTITLE KAREL MARTENS ANALYSIS Karel Martens work is not especially relevant to motion typography Play with color and the results of overlapping colored shapes may suggest some sort of dimensionality or motion but still remain quite static The extreme formalism and emphasis on legibility does not display the narrative qualities necessary in time based media The only parallels could be to the 60s work of Saul Bas but this connection is merely aesthetic i e The high contrast simple geometric shapes and swiss modernist typography KAREL MARTENS CONCLUSIONS Qualities Criticism unification of art design stranglehold on dutch design tons of contemporary dutch work could easily be mistaken for his work from the 60s lack of evolution works are not concept driven with one liners meaning derived from a subtler infusion focus on text its meaning body forth typography is committed nondogmatic focus on detail inability or refusal to work with images photography formal study lacks meaning message concept Remains in the realm of superficiality beauty KAREL MARTENS REFERENCES Printed Matter Karel Martens 1996 Counterprint Karel Martens 2004 In Alphabetical Order Paul Elliman 2002