Stylogenyin the style of Total Design & Dutch Functionalism

Rational modernism · 1963–1990 · Western Europe

Total Design & Dutch Functionalism

Also known as Total Design, Dutch Functionalism, Dutch systematic modernism

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.

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Oversized lowercase lettering reads “urban rhy thm” in black, red and blue on an off-white background with fine grey grid lines. Rectangles, repeated bars and large blue and black circular segments fill the remaining space.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Make the grid visible and let it govern letter construction as well as layout.
  • Draw display alphabets from the page's orthogonal module: squares, quarter-circles, uniform strokes.
  • Set information in one neo-grotesque, ragged right, in a strict hierarchy of few sizes.
  • Treat a museum, an airport and a corporation with the same impersonal, programmatic system.
  • Use one or two flat colours against white or black and let the typographic structure itself become the image.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Abundant decoration, Floral & vegetal, Script, Ornamented display, Central symmetry, Organic flow, Painterly illustration, Nostalgic & retro

Palette

  • #ffffff
  • #111111
  • #e4352a
  • #1e50a2
  • #bdbdbd

Typefaces

  • New Alphabet

    Wim Crouwel, 1967

  • Univers

  • Helvetica

  • Gridnik

    Wim Crouwel

  • Stedelijk

    Wim Crouwel

Known for

  • Wim Crouwel

    Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam posters and catalogues, 1963–1985

  • Wim Crouwel, Vormgevers poster (1968) and New Alphabet

    1967

  • Benno Wissing

    Schiphol Airport signage, from the mid-1960s

  • Wim Crouwel, PTT numeral stamps

    1976

  • Total Design work for Randstad, De Bijenkorf and PAM

  • Ben Bos

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Total Design & Dutch Functionalism’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleTotal Design & Dutch Functionalism1963–1990 · Western Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Kees Broos & Paul Hefting, Dutch Graphic Design: A Century (1993)
  2. Design Museum London, Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey (exhibition, 2011)
  3. Design Reviewed, Total Design archive (https://designreviewed.com)

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.