Stylogeny combining Cranbrook × Dutch Expressive Postmodernism

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Style combination · Contrasts

Cranbrook × Dutch Expressive Postmodernism

Its transatlantic contemporary: Katherine McCoy of Cranbrook co-organised the 1986 Chicago show of Dutch design. Cranbrook layers text to be read and argued over; the Dutch studios layer pictures, colour and staged depth to be enjoyed. Choose Cranbrook for theory-laden spreads and the Dutch idiom for posters that must play.

From the research on Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken)

Mix them and make something Cranbrook Dutch Expressive Postmodernism

No!Cranbrook × Dutch Expressive1980 · 1977
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism, their arrangement from Cranbrook, the finish from Cranbrook. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken)

Type from Cranbrook
Colour from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
Form from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
Composition from Cranbrook
Surface from Cranbrook

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The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Cranbrook

No!

Inter Tight, standing in for Univers and Helvetica, fragmented and layered

Text · Dutch Expressive Postmodernism

An anti-functionalist current in Dutch graphic design led by Studio Dumbar in The Hague (from 1977) and the Rotterdam collective Hard Werken (magazine from 1979, design office 1982–1994). Turning against the sober grids of Total Design, they used typography as illustration, mismatched and cut-up typefaces, crude assemblage and shrieking colour. Dumbar added staged photographs of built sets that play with depth. The idiom also reached public clients, in the PTT (1989) and police (1993) identities.

Inter; Dutch Expressive Postmodernism used Mismatched, cut-apart display faces and Grotesques sliced, rescaled and layered

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism, with a counter-accent from Cranbrook. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken)

  • #ffd100 ground · 36%
  • #141414 ink · 14%
  • #e5007e accent · 18%
  • #d1342c accent · 14%
  • #c99a2e accent · 10%
  • #00965e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffd100;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #e5007e;
  --accent-2: #d1342c;
  --accent-3: #c99a2e;
  --accent-4: #00965e;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken): The police logo and vehicle striping and the PTT and film-festival marks are live or protected identities: borrow the method (built sets, mismatched type, deconstructed modernist elements), never reproduce the Politie insignia or striping, which signal real police authority, or present a design as a Studio Dumbar or Hard Werken work.

04

The two styles

A tall, distressed collage poster reads “GLASS RIVER” in oversized black, gray, and red letters. Black-and-white fragments of an eye, a bridge, water, mountains, and trees overlap mustard-yellow and red blocks, fine diagrams, and small text on an ivory background. 1980–1998 · North America Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography Graduate-school experimentation, centred on Katherine and Michael McCoy's Cranbrook design programme, that applied post-structuralist literary theory to the page. Text and image were layered into dense fields to be read rather than merely seen; typographic hierarchy was fractured, vernacular lettering was mixed with theory, and meaning was left open for the reader to construct. Oversized cutout letters spell “NOISE PARADE” above a colourful, distressed collage of a shouting face, a megaphone, concrete buildings, and people on stairs. Bright geometric shapes, stripes, and checkerboard fragments overlap the black-and-white photographic imagery. 1977–1994 · Western Europe Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken) An anti-functionalist current in Dutch graphic design led by Studio Dumbar in The Hague (from 1977) and the Rotterdam collective Hard Werken (magazine from 1979, design office 1982–1994). Turning against the sober grids of Total Design, they used typography as illustration, mismatched and cut-up typefaces, crude assemblage and shrieking colour. Dumbar added staged photographs of built sets that play with depth. The idiom also reached public clients, in the PTT (1989) and police (1993) identities.

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