Everybody’s free to design nice posters. Or are they?

What is design? People much smarter and more educated than I have difficulties with that question, therefore this current headache feels slightly justified. To ease the pain, how about learning of how the likes of Studio Dumbar deal with the word and see if we get a little enlightenment. (P.S. design for your eyes included.) 

• Studio Dumbar
• Legendary design agency.
• Rotterdam, the Netherlands

This post was triggered from one not long ago about product designers Scholten & Baijings (read it here). To recap, as Dumbar state amongst their vision statements,

“Some projects don’t focus on strategy but on pure, 100% design power. Studio Dumbar calls these ‘free spirit projects’. Here, the designer has only one challenge: to see how far his or her creativity can go. Most of the assignments in this category come from organizations based in arts
and culture.”

As lightly as I touched on it in that post, Francis Smith (a designer I owe many an IOU to) was the man to ask more about it. I had planned on writing in detail on the subject, but right now I’m on a plane running on very little sleep. So lets say thanks to Dodo and Liza at Studio Dumbar for their time and generously sharing work, here’s some words on what they have to say:

“Our so called ‘Free Spirit’ Projects are cultural projects that are often partly or completely sponsored by Studio Dumbar. This way we create our own creative freedom. Naturally all this cannot be done without the support of an open minded client who understands the importance and power of creativity. 

Zeebelt Theatre was one of our first ‘design laboratories’.”

client: Zeebelt Theatre 
item: theatre programmes
design: Studio Dumbar
photographer: Lex van Pieterson
year: 1988/1989

“More recent examples are the poster series created for Pulchri Studio…”

client: Pulchri Studio
item: exhibition posters
design: Studio Dumbar
year: 2003/2004

“… the European Design Festival and Amsterdam Sinfonietta.”

client: Amsterdam Sinfonietta
item: posters for the promotion of music programmes
design: Studio Dumbar
year: 2011/2012

If you don’t know the designer Rejane Dal Bello who created the posters for the Amsterdam Sinfonietta you need to click on this link here immediately. I’m going to leave it at that (hi man in plane staring at my screen, can you read this?) and enjoy looking at some lovely design.