Style combination · Contrasts
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism × Total Design
The foil it was 'anti' to: Total Design's visible grid, one cool sans and white space against Hard Werken's and Dumbar's mismatched type, crude assemblage and shrieking colour. The same 1986 exhibition set them up as the two poles of Dutch design; quote one exposed grid inside a staged-photo poster to show the argument.
Mix them and make something Dutch Expressive Postmodernism Total Design
01
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.
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken) Total Design & Dutch Functionalism
- Type from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
- Colour from Total Design
- Form from Total Design
- Composition from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
- Surface from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
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02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
Grid
Inter Tight, standing in for Grotesques sliced, rescaled and layered
Text · Total Design
The Dutch strand of systematic modernism took shape when Wim Crouwel, Benno Wissing, Friso Kramer and Paul and Dick Schwarz founded Total Design in Amsterdam in 1963 as the country's first multidisciplinary studio. It pushed Swiss grid logic towards the mechanical: visible grids, alphabets constructed on the same module as the page, and one cool, programmatic order applied to museums, airports and corporations alike.
Inter; Total Design used New Alphabet and Univers
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Total Design, with a counter-accent from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken) Total Design & Dutch Functionalism
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#ffffffground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#e4352aaccent · 18% -
#e5007eaccent · 14% -
#1e50a2accent · 10% -
#bdbdbdaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ffffff;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #e4352a;
--accent-2: #e5007e;
--accent-3: #1e50a2;
--accent-4: #bdbdbd;
--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
05
More combinations
With Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
- Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography Contrasts · 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.
- Memphis Design Pairs well · A contemporary 1980s attack on good taste: set Memphis primitives, squiggles and patterned laminates inside a Dumbar-style photographed set for a poster with real shadows and clashing colour.
- De Stijl Pairs well · Dumbar's forerunner at Teldesign, the Mondriaan poster for the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (1971–72), photographed De Stijl's coloured bars standing in real space like an installation, and his De Stijl poster with Lex van Pieterson (1982) was a staged arrangement of objects, among them a portrait of Rietveld; lift the primaries and bars off the page, build them as a set and photograph it for the Dutch postmodern twist on the movement.
- Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography Contrasts · Basel's rebellion kept the grotesque and the halftone in an abstract grid; the Dutch one brings in figures, props, painting and photographed depth. Choose Basel New Wave for abstract type textures and the Dutch idiom when the poster needs objects and a stage.
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Hard Werken began as a DIY underground magazine; add punk's photocopied cut-and-paste to the Dutch idiom's offset colour for a rougher, more anti-professional edge.
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Contrasts · Studio Dumbar also built scenes and photographed them, but filled the set with mismatched type and flat modernist shapes; Hipgnosis kept the lettering off the picture and made the scene look plausible. Choose between a visibly constructed set and a believable impossibility.
With Total Design
- Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography Contrasts · Cranbrook's layered, reader-dependent pages invert Total Design's single impersonal reading; set one against the other to argue order versus interpretation.
- Bitmap & Pixel Graphics Pairs well · Crouwel's New Alphabet anticipated screen type; combine grid-drawn letters with pixel fonts for a historically grounded digital identity.
- Neo-Swiss Revival Pairs well · Neo-Swiss layouts gain edge by borrowing Total Design's exposed grid and module-built display letters.
- Op Art Graphics Pairs well · Line-built letters and op line fields share a module; layer them for vibrating posters that remain strictly systematic.
- Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD) Contrasts · Both make an institution recognisable by its letters and grids, but Total Design applies one impersonal programme across clients, while on Picelj's gallery posters the unit changes with every artist shown and Arsovski breaks the order with collage, pop photographs and rebuses.
- Jeepney Art Contrasts · Systematic transit signage is the rational opposite of owner-by-owner jeepney lettering; contrast the two when designing public-transport identities.
- Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau) Contrasts · Dutch design's later ornament-free grid against its own ornamental past: a filled, symmetrical batik cover beside a Crouwel layout in sans-serif on white makes the choice between pattern and pure information explicit.