Super Holland Design

Hello Tomoko, Can you give us a brief introduction about yourself?
Well, I am mostly an editor of architecture books here at Actar. As my name shows, I am Japanese. I studied architecture in Tokyo before coming to Barcelona.

Since I started to work at Actar, I mainly do architectural books, but I edit some graphic design books too. Actually, the very first book which I did at Actar was HD (Holland Design). And Super Holland Design is the second volume. The Netherlands, at that time when HD was published, 2001, was the only country I knew where architecture and graphic design had a very tight connection.

Architectural offices like OMA and MVRDV are known for their beautiful projects with strong graphic designs. Now, every architecture office in any country really cares about graphic design in their presentations, but the Netherlands were the leading country in this phenomenon. So I started to edit graphic design books, using architecture as the entrance…

Dutch Design has a very good reputation worldwide, but where did the idea come from to start this series called Super Holland Design?
The first book of HD was made in collaboration with AGD-FAD, the graphic design association in Spain. They present an annual Spanish graphic design award ceremony called LAUS, and the Netherlands was the invited country for 2001. Actar joined that event as curator/editor of the Dutch graphic design exhibition and book. The first book was born! And the book had a very good reputation worldwide. Now, independently, Actar decided to create the second volume.

In what way do you think Dutch Design nowadays differs from design in other countries?
I think in strength and straight-forwardness. And that character is common also to Dutch architecture and industrial design. In other countries, many designers are trying to make something ‘beautiful’. But for me, it seems that the Dutch designers try to make something ‘effective’ before ‘beautiful’.

This doesn’t mean that Dutch design is not beautiful! There are so many beautiful Dutch designs, too, but none of them are ineffective! It means that they always think of the reaction of the viewers/users of the design. Their concept is clear and easy to grasp. So it is very interesting to ‘read’ the designs much more than ‘watch’ them.

Since there is so much good Dutch Design out there, it must have been a tough job to decide which content was best for the 416 pages. What do you reckon all artists and designers featured in the book have in common?
Looking at hundreds of designers, we started to discover recurring themes for the book chapters. And we tried to find the works which represented those concepts most strongly. There are many more good works and good designers, but we tried to focus on themes to fit the book into 416 pages!

The first edition, Holland Design, has been very successful. What can we expect from this second edition?
The first book was a book of ‘discovery’ of Dutch graphic design for us. But this second volume tells us the wider variation of the concepts, situations, medias etc.

You can see that the ‘role of the designer’ can be much wider than you originally thought. In that sense, I hope that younger designers and students will read this book. Because this is not a book for viewing beautiful designs to imitate superficially, but to re-think the power or influence of graphic design on clients, viewers, and ultimately society.

Both the first and second edition of Super Holland Design are published by Actar in Barcelona. Can you tell us a bit more about their background and what their link is with Dutch Design?
Actar publishes books on architecture, design, photography and contemporary art.
We are based in Barcelona, but make books with works from many countries. And our in-house team of editors, designers, etc is also very international. We love and admire Dutch design. In architecture, for example, we made a big, thick monograph by MVRDV called KM3, which became a bestseller.

We mainly publish architecture books, but have been creating many graphic design books like HD (Holland Design), JPG and JPG II (Japanese graphic design), ESC (Spanish graphic design) and we are currently working on U.K., U.S.A., and German graphic design books. I really hope that we will have a chance to make the third volume of HD. I will start to think about a ‘Super-er’ title for it!

Leg ons uit waarom jij een exemplaar van SHD moet krijgen, en misschien win je er wel een! Mailen naar prijsvraag@fontanel.nl