Re: H.N Werkman

With everything that's been going on recently (aka: moving to a new city, filling in a forests worth of paper work and generally adjusting to a new lifestyle) I have kind of been feeling pretty numb on the design front - mainly in the way of remembering anything that has inspired me over the last year or so. It has ultimately felt like a dose of amnesia chased by a heavy night on the drink where everything that may or may not have happened in that time of intoxication appears to be a complete blur when trying to recollect the next morning.

However, luckily for me tonight brought a mild sense of relief when I managed to stumble across an archived disc of my college work from last year. On it was a series of pictures by a relatively unknown Dutch designer, typographer and printer named Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman. You may have seen his work, you may have not. Either way, it was something that I personally became almost obsessed with last year and therefore thought I would like to share with you all now.



Although these aren't the best examples of his work I just really love the way in which he experimented so thoroughly with different styles of layout and seemed to effortlessly combine type and blocks of colour in such an aesthetically pleasing manner. This goes for numerous other designers really; Marinetti, El Lissitzky and Tristan Tzara to name but a few.

It was just such a shame that the majority of his works were destroyed by a fire that broke out when German troops were fighting the Canadians in his town... not to forget that he was also arrested and shot dead by a firing squad under the orders of Adolf Hitler just three days before his province was liberated. What do you say to that?

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