The Debate: The Legendary Contest of Two Giants of Graphic Design

摘要

Few countries give as much cultural weight to graphic design as the Netherlands. Where Switzerland in the post-war years was known for a particular style of formal typography, graphic designers in the Netherlands were more diverse. The country's long tradition of printing and typography accounts for some of graphic design's cultural value, as does a long-standing government commitment to quality design, especially in the Dutch Post Office (PTT), which in the 1920s started a programme of commissioning prominent graphic designers to create its stamps and identity materials, and in the Stedelijk Museum, where Willem Sandberg became director in 1945, after a lengthy relationship that began in the late 1920s. The design of Dutch currency was also exemplary.