Wim Crouwel magic

Trying to get around how to use text in an artwork. I’m interested in particular in the dynamics between text as a visual medium and text as an image. The former is about using text as medium to describe what one sees, the latter is about using text as pure image, deprived of meaning. Both deal with the visuality of text, but in complete opposite ways. The problem is to get them to work together in an interesting way.

To get some inspiration I dug up one of my old favorites, Wim Crouwel. In the sixties and seventies he designed all printed material for City Art Museum in Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum. He treats text always as an autonomous form, where words not only function to describe something, but also to create an image, composition, layout and feeling. Crouwel always mentioned how modernists movements such as Bauhaus and De Stijl inspired him. You can recognize their functionality, but at the same time his typography is very life-felt and sometimes it almost feels like the letters are vibrating on the paper.

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