Trying to bring some strangeness into the world – an encounter with graphic designer Richard Niessen

by Emilia Barbu
Interview

Colourful posters, signs and symbols, diverse visual languages and forging paths into the unknown — for a brief hour, I got to step into the universe of Richard Niessen, peek into his library and wander around his Palace of Typographic Masonry for a bit. As a graphic designer, Richard is known for his innovative identities, architectural approach and numerous collaborations with other artists that often join him on visual explorations of life and letters. Experimentation, research and connection stand at the base of his practice, as he follows his own path, while constantly widening horizons.

designer expo

Just like exploring a palace of hidden visual treasure, our chat took us in all sorts of directions, through different rooms of thought and imagination – perhaps the perfect sneak peek into the Design Sessions talk he’ll be holding at Residența9 on October 31st. 

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(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

The beginnings – how did you become a graphic designer? What drew you to this choice?

It’s actually something I always also ask my students because it’s such an unknown profession in a way. We see all these things around us that are designed, graphically designed, but no one knows about the decisions behind – and people have influence over that. So as a child I did not know about this – I did not grow up in an artistic or cultural environment. Nevertheless, I remember that we once went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and I was just stunned by the paintings and everything. And that sort of connected to me very well – I also had an interest in drawing and making comics. I remember that there was a time when my father was importing wine and once he brought me a stack of wine labels and I was just so intrigued by them.

So yeah, now I remember I had this interest in letters very early on.

I also remember that, when I was in high school, there was an exhibition by Joost Swarte, a Dutch illustrator and designer. I went there with a friend of mine, I think I was 15 and I was completely blown away by these drawings: in his comics and posters he uses letters that he draws himself and yeah, I was completely fascinated by it. Then I read a little biography on the wall and it said that he was educated as a graphic designer or that he went to a design school. And then I thought, okay, that’s what I want to do.

“A way of communicating”

A little later I started to design or to make the school paper and I’d also make posters in school and so, for me, graphic design was also a way of communicating to the outside world somehow. So when I was making these comics, I sometimes copied them and gave them to people in the class. I think it was more of a tool and, at the same time, something that was visually attractive and interesting to learn about. When I was 17 I went to the Rietveld Academy, the same school Esther went to and yeah, after graduating, I became a graphic designer. 

What about posters? Did you always have this attraction towards them? 

Yeah, I think because I was already making posters myself in school. We had a small anarchic group and we wanted to change the school – so we started making posters. And then other people in school also started making posters as a response and yeah, I really liked it. That was such a great experience, I noticed how I could build upon this visual language and it struck me how you could make a visual narrative and communicate to an audience, it was very intriguing. And I don’t know why, but it’s also something that I talk about with students: most of them are very shy, but they want to reach out somehow, so to make graphic design is a perfect way to deal with that: to make yourself heard in a way, but not by shouting or by being physically present, but by translate it into a form.

And I think that, in the end, this is what I like about graphic design, because it’s about making things public. Also, when you publish a book, it’s information that you share with others and to find the right form for it is an interesting exploration.

Speaking of which, how did your relationship with books evolve over time?

I think there were just a few books in our house, but there were some companies that sold books quite cheaply, some sort of book clubs and I remember we were a member of that for a while. I think when you became a member, you got a book for free (I don’t know how else this book would’ve come to be in our house) 

Richard reaches out behind him and starts searching through the library shelves

Yeah, it was this book: Strange Stories, Amazing Facts and it’s Reader’s Digest, it’s a very common edition. But, looking back at it now, it’s actually designed in a nice way, it’s almost like an encyclopaedia. And it’s completely filled with strange stories, buildings, astronomy and all sorts of strange facts. And as a child I could completely disappear in it, so this was my first experience with a book that could really absorb me (apart from comic books).

I also liked its physical aspect and the fact that you could really disappear in the chapters and slowly start to understand the structure of a book like that, this is something that I still remember very well. So, yeah, that was the one that started the whole thing and it’s one of the books that’s still with me today.

And for the rest, it was only later that I realised that books can also be designed in a certain way. I remember that when I was around 17 or 18 years old, I went to a bookstore in Amsterdam that also sold photo books or catalogues — and that’s where I found out that there’s another category of books in which design plays a role. Then there was another thing: my father worked at the Dutch postal service and, each year, he got the annual report that was designed by famous graphic designers in the Netherlands, so they were always strangely edited (A/N – here’s an interesting example of graphic design for the Dutch Post Office Board)

Do you remember if there were any books or a book in particular that inspired you or that stayed with you? 

Yeah that came later, when I graduated – I remember when I was asked by an artist, Jennifer Tee, to design a book. That was actually the moment when I started to wonder what books I like, what kind of book would I like to make? And then I looked at my shelf and I thought, okay, which books do I keep? Which books are inspiring to me? 

And there was this one book, I think it’s also here, it’s quite old, it’s from ‘91, Linda van Deursen designed this and it’s a catalogue of Gerard van de Kaap. And it was designed in a very 90s way, like one big flyer, the graphic language became one with the work of the artist in a way. So it was visually very attractive. 

Richard browses through the book, pointing out how the work of the artist blends with the typography. Then he pulls out a catalogue, an unbound book with sheets and artwork by Fischli and Weiss, noticing how each slide works with the other, and how this kind of work requires a commitment: you have to clear your desk and almost turn this experience into a project – something he likes

Part of the concept of this book that I designed with Jennifer Tee was for it to be visually inspired by her work and we made something that was almost a work in itself, very unhandy and almost a performance to unfold. It was one big map that traced her work in a certain way, it was something you had to engage with as a reader or a viewer and this approach stuck with me. After this book we collaborated on all kinds of art projects actually, with this idea of almost translating the work of the artist into a visual language.

And speaking of projects and visual languages, I was fascinated with the Palace of Typographic Masonry — how did that come to life? What is it about typography and masonry? It’s not a very common association.

I think 20 years ago there was an exhibition about the architect and graphic designer Hendrik Wijdeveld, who worked for a very long time – he actually wrote an autobiography with the title My First Century, because he was over 100 years old. He was a very inspiring figure working in the 1920s/30s and he was also editor of the magazine called Wendingen. And in this magazine he invited other artists and designers to contribute and make beautiful covers for this magazine. 

Richard finds a few examples to show me from his library

And when he was designing he would use these metal type elements and build his design and compositions with them. So you get these brick-like letters and his colleagues gave him this nickname: a typographic brick maker or typographic masoner. 

When I saw this exhibition this really resonated with me because at that time I was also working with all these details and building something almost like a constructor, really. So I took this name for my own practice and I think in 2007 I made an exhibition where I created a three-dimensional city that I called TM City (Typographic Masonry City). And when I wanted to make this personal museum of graphic design, I thought, okay, maybe this palace is part of this TM City, it’s somewhere in this city. And so I called it the Palace of Typographic Masonry.

Richard recalls how, on the occasion of another exhibition, A Hermetic Compendium of Typographic Masonry, he received a call from someone in a Freemasonry lodge in the UK, claiming that his designer work was inspired by Freemasonry. He never really thought about that association and just barely knew that this secret brotherhood existed, but this intriguing coincidence made him realise that, perhaps graphic designers also form a sort of secret brotherhood – because they talk about things no one else understands. The analogies didn’t stop there:

You know, with this Freemasonry, they see every element that they make or that they discuss in their sessions as part of a building. So I thought, oh, it’s actually nice to see the Palace as something that we built together. I invite a lot of colleagues to research graphic design and to reflect on collections that I made, that I created. And so I consider this as a collective building, somehow, and in this way it also resonates with this title. 

Do you see lots of parallels or connections between architecture, construction and graphic design?

In my practice, yes: for instance, a book as a building or a poster is also a sort of a three-dimensional space. There’s many ways in which you can make this comparison. In fact, one of the spaces in this Palace of Typographic Masonry is called the Typotectural Suites. And it talks about this relation between architecture and typography, and you have buildings that look like letters and letters that look like buildings. There’s quite an exchange going on, which I find very interesting. 

So how was it to bring this project to life in Turin?

So this started completely digitally, with several folders on my computer where I collected stuff that I liked. Then the first thing I did was to make a poster to announce this palace, it was there with the basic bricks. And it’s an interesting thing that once you print something or you make it public or it becomes physical, something you can take in your hands, then suddenly this something exists. 

And from there, whenever I was invited to hold a workshop or a lecture, I decided to create a new room in this imaginary building. And at a certain moment I had made quite a few rooms and I started wondering, where is this going? So I thought it would be nice to make a book because it’s almost like a story. It’s a little bit like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you know, you can go from room to room. And from there, you could say that by travelling through this building, you are initiated in the profession.

Richard starts showing me “around” the book Esther (his partner) designed – from the little cards representing the source collection, to the nine departments structure he came up with, the tour guide (Dirk van Weelden) or the contributions from fellow artists accompanying each room. He recalls how he started making little exhibitions and wrote a story of an imaginary conversation between a visitor and the designer of the palace. The story reached multiple people in the Netherlands, one thing led to another and, one day, the Graphic Matters organisations called about an exhibition on Dutch design in Turin, organised by the Graphic Days festival. Their suggestion? To create a physical version of Richard’s palace and show it to the world. (Read an interview with Esther de Vries here)

So yeah, that happened three years ago: I came up with the idea that I could make a travelling exhibition initiated by this palace — as if the palace exists, but no one can find it or few people are allowed to go or it’s far away. So this palace sends out a travelling drawer that could be set up in any place, just showing a little bit of the collection, with each drawer containing a few items from each room. I was able to ask more colleagues to respond to these collections and it was super nice that this was possible.

After this it started travelling: it went to Breda and next year, in February, it will be in Frankfurt. And we can continue to actually build because on each occasion, I can make some new drawers and I can invite more people to reflect on that.

It’s an infinite palace

Yeah, exactly. It’s so nice that it starts with just a printed sheet of paper and it just expands with the people exploring it as well.

The world as a palace — where does graphic design stand in this imaginary structure?

(he laughs)

It’s a difficult one. One of the artists that I really like from the Netherlands, Carlijn Kingma, comes to mind: she also makes very big drawings where she explains a certain topic through architecture, creating these imaginary buildings or worlds. And last year she made a drawing explaining how our financial world works. And then she tries to translate that into a three-dimensional space. And this is also a tradition in art or in infographics, you could say, but also something that is a source of inspiration to me. So I’m just thinking, what would Carlijn Kingma do? I think it’s too complicated to see the whole world as a building, I think we need at least a few buildings. 

Actually, one of the rooms in the palace that I’m working on now is called the Mechanics of the Mediating Discipline — because I see graphic design as a mediating discipline. It’s always connecting people or connecting information to people. But then as a discipline in itself, it’s not autonomous — there’s always certain power structures going on, which are not often visible. So we are trying to show these mechanics or at least describe them, how graphic design is functioning as a tool within society, to influence what philosophers call the symbolic order. Because graphic design is a tool to manipulate views or to translate ideas into images, so they can resonate with people – it’s in a way quite a powerful profession.

But at the same time, it’s also just one of the wheels in a bigger machinery. So I think it’s good to realise how it functions and why things are there. 

For instance, books are financed, so they also promote something. It’s not just that they are nice and we can appreciate the design. Sure, there’s the aesthetics side, but the fact that some books become famous among designers happens also because a lot of money is invested in order to make those ideas manifest. But then that’s a little bit hidden behind these aesthetics. So now we’re trying to make a framework that allows us to approach graphic design from that perspective. And it’s interesting to find out how this works and how, in the end, graphic designers have some influence on how this field looks. In the palace itself these mechanics have a place on the 3rd floor and I see it as the room where the big clockwork is operating. And we have a little curtain covering the mechanics where you can view how things work — so that’s where at least the profession has a place or the mechanics of the discipline has a place in the palace itself.

Would you say that, to be a good graphic designer, you also need to know people well, to understand human nature in order to strike a chord with your work?

I think there’s perhaps an element of psychology or understanding the human mind – speaking for myself, I don’t have this knowledge, not in a conscious way, anyway. But of course, when I work on a project, I try to understand the project as well as I can through graphic design, through my sketches and my research, and trying out and testing a lot. At a certain moment, I find a form in which the project can be understood, at least as far as I’m concerned.

So in that way, this is what I can offer to an audience as well: something for them to unconsciously understand, perhaps. But in the end I can only relate to what excites me in a way, what makes it work for me when I see something, so I try to do my best to come close to that experience. 

Of course, I don’t know if this counts for everyone but, on the other hand, I think that when you make something really specific and personal, at the same time it becomes universal. And I think that, when you make something mediocre, it does not make that much of an impact on people, because it stays in the stream of ordinary things and it doesn’t stand out. 

It’s just, it’s exactly what you see happening a lot at the moment: so much of the same that you don’t connect to it anymore or not as much as you would like. 

I was actually going to bring this up. This year, I was at a creative conference in Barcelona and there was a talk by Max Ottignon, co-founder of the Ragged Edge branding agency, who was basically describing the current landscape as “a sea of sameness”. A sameness that algorithms and the digital world tend to reward, because if you ride the wave of a trend, you get pushed to the front of your online audience. So I also wanted to ask you about visual languages, because you speak a lot about the relevance and the importance of their diversity in the Palace of Typographic Masonry.  Why do you think this diversity is relevant and also worth encouraging?

Actually, I was recently making something and I was thinking it looks like nothing that I know — which, at the same time, makes you very insecure because you think it looks so strange in a certain way, it doesn’t look like anything that is already there. And it makes me actually more and more insecure when you are in this sea of sameness, because you think you’re doing something wrong.

I think that’s quite dangerous. I see the same thing happening with the commissioners or the clients: they are actually looking for this sameness, while at the same time, they’re saying they want to make something that stands out. I just read this book by Paul Verhaeghe where he says that, if you look at what the norm is, then it’s a really small path at the moment, one we are all conditioned to be on. And once you behave in a certain way, strangely, when you are not able to conform yourself to this norm, you are immediately labelled as some sort of an illness. 

But I think 50 years ago, people were not more ill than today: it was just society that made more space in this path, so that people who behave a little bit weird could be part of this, too. And I think this is what we should do. Because now, as everyone gets pushed to behave on this narrow road, the road gets worn out deeper and deeper. And there will come a moment when we won’t be able to get off this road anymore. So I think we should broaden the field or the path that we take.

And with graphic design, it’s such a nice tool to make strange things and to make them normal, in a way. Because then people become more accustomed to this wider range of taste, at least visually. But to make this really narrow is quite scary.

Do you see that happening with your students? Do you try to open more paths for them? 

Yeah, a bit. At the same time, most of them come from a sort of social layer that embraces strangeness perhaps a bit more than the majority of people. But sometimes they’re scared to make or to follow their specific paths, so they also conform in a way.

Did you ever have a moment where you doubted your path? 

No, I’ve never doubted it – I’m quite narrow-minded in that sense. 

Is there any advice you would give to young graphic designers or something you would tell your younger self ?

Well to come off that narrow path, to have confidence in that.

Not to doubt or be afraid to be on the outside of this path or even to go beyond it, because I think when you work on an assignment or on a project, it leads you somewhere, to an unknown area. So the outcome actually should be unknown and not like anything else. So yeah, I would say have confidence in where your curiosity takes you and don’t be too conscious about all the algorithms and what everybody expects you to do. Try to bring in some strangeness in the world to widen this path.

designer box

I think it’s difficult and it’s getting more difficult with each day. It’s something that is quite scary, but maybe if we talk about this more and make things that are not so understandable and create this trust in things that are not so predictable and safe, we can steer off that safe path.

So yeah, that, that would be the advice.

Any recommendations for our readers, to conclude?

Well, last week I saw Hamid Zénati’s work at Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt and I was very impressed. An autodidact, detached from the official art world, with his own urgency, who created his own universe in textiles, ceramics or wearable sculptures. This puts me on the trail of the Museum of Everything, with, for instance, the work of Carlo Zinelli, Willem van Genk or Bodys Isek Kingelez, also ‘outsiders’, very inspiring.


All images courtesy of Richard Niessen.