Born @ WdKA
Graphic Design

75B! Enough Said!

Pieter Vos & Rens Muis
Fri 24 Jan
Function Founders of creative firm 75B
Year 1997
Major Graphic Design
Practice

We are a creative firm based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. We introduce cultural content to its audience through visual communication

75B: conceptual, simple, no-nonsense, ironical and tongue-in-cheek.

Ineke Schwartz, "Apples & Oranges"

Founders of Rotterdam-based graphic design studio 75B

Pieter Vos & Rens Muis photographed by Jan Bijl

Are you inspired by the same thing? Two peas in a pod or completely different?

Completely different, thank god.

What is your favourite WdKA memory?

Teachers smoking in front of the class.

How did your collaboration start?

One of the teachers put us together in a room and let us work on something for his neighbour.

How did your collaboration become a success? Was it a long way full of hardships or did it ‘just happen’?

In that room, we realised that we complete each other in our qualities (or lack of those if you want) and could reach more if we used that chemistry.

Famous 'portrait' created for International Film Festival Rotterdam

75B:
"Founder of the IFFR, Hubert Bals, came up with the idea of a tiger, loosely based on the M.G.M. lion. The IFFR is promoting alternative, innovative and non-commercial films, with the emphasis on the far east and developing countries. The iconic tiger portrait is facing you and can easily be drawn by hand."

On personal integrity hangs humanity’s fate

Buckminster Fuller

Are you pioneers?

No, we didn’t invent anything important or useful.

What is the future of your profession in your opinion?

Rens: Frankly, we don’t know exactly but we guess the bigger picture is that in any field there always will be a small forefront of designers who will be very interesting to notice (follow?). We see that the differences between certain national design characteristics are disappearing, maybe because everyone can access anyone’s work very fast and easy now.

An Iron rule is in this Buckminster Fuller’s quote on design: “You either make sense or you make money”. I think for the designers this choice will become even more radical in future, but I am not saying that they can’t be smart in combining both. But mainly: designing based on an artistic motive or on an experiment is very valuable and can enrich and broaden the work field of graphic design - you won’t earn a lot on it though. If you design conforming clichés and make exactly what’s requested just to sell something - you will make money but your work will have no intellectual or artistic value or recognition. Our opinion on this matter is expressed in another Buckminster Fuller’s quote: “On personal integrity hangs humanity’s fate”.

You never leave your house without…?

..having our kids dropped at school.

Any words of advice to future students?

Don’t believe what they tell you.

Name your favourite recent project.

It is very difficult to speak about recent things but we are working on a new crest for the city of Amsterdam now - it’s a nice city to discover and enjoy its pleasures.

The new crest designed for Amsterdam by 75B

Launch date May 18th, 2017

Visit the 75B website and admire the diversity and quality of their work!