Karel Martens / Guest 10 — Design Interview 1Q

Karel Martens is an icon of graphic design also if he does not like to be labelled as a designer but as a human being.
Karel is a dutch "human being", his accolades include the H.N. Werkman Prize (1993) for the design of the architectural journal Oase, the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art (1996), the Gold Medal at the Leipzig Book Fair (1998), and numerous other distinctions.
Martens’ unwavering experimentation with printing processes, graphic form, and the construction of typographic meaning over the past half-century has indelibly imprinted a younger generation of designers, as has his teaching at the Yale School of Art, Jan van Eyck Academie, and co-founding of the Werkplaats Typografie in 1997. In 2016 and 2917 he participates as a mentor in the master’s program at Design Academy Eindhoven (department Contextual Design).
Martens has laboriously developed an oeuvre of seminal monoprints, which have been widely published but only recently exhibited.
Created on a small letterpress, the prints are a site of visual experimentation and formal research for Martens, who works on them nearly every day. Since their initial presentation in 2012 at P! in New York, Martens’ letterpress works have been published in Artforum’s “Best of 2012,” The New Yorker, Art in America, The Observer, Design Observer, Mousse Magazine and others; have been exhibited internationally in the Netherlands, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium and England; and have been acquired by institutions including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Modern Art Library and Archives, New York, MoMA, Sfmoma San Francisco; and the Art Institute of Chicago.


Karel's Interview:
1Q — What made you become a designer? [2:20]
2Q — What is design for you? [8:07]
3Q — What do you create as a designer? [10:54]
4Q — What kind of process are you interest in? When you are designing a project. [13:42]
5Q — Does perfection exist in design? [20:08]
6Q — What do you think about contemporary design? [25:10]
7Q — What do you think about the impact the internet had on design? [29:55]
8Q — How do you see design education? [33:20]
9Q — What kind of role the designer will have in the future? [34:35]
1Q — What do you think the design world can do for this global pandemic? [40:15]

About
Design Interview 1Q has been created and is curated by Fabio Mario Rizzotti, a graphic designer based in Italy. At the moment the entire world is facing a global pandemic, and that obliges us to stay at home, probably for an extended period so, what Design Interview 1Q wants to do, is to generate and share useful content for people. We want to make people feel the support of the design world as well, that's why we will interview designers from all around the world.

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