At this moment there is an exhibition in honour of the Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel at Design Museum in the United Kingdom. We thought it might be nice to take a quick look at famous designs a few Dutch designers are responsible for. It is obvious that the list of outstanding pieces is long, so we selected five designs we think of as must-sees.

In the early sixties a group of designers started a company with the idea to bring all forms of design together. These designers were Wim Crouwel, Benno Wissing, Friso Kramer, Paul Schwarz and Dick Schwarz. The company was called Total Design and still exists under the name Total Identity. Their work has been and still is a great influence on the designers in the Netherlands nowadays.

One of Wim Crouwel’s design is the New Alphabet. A revolutionary alphabet that could be read by computers.

Benno Wissing designed the signposting at Schiphol airport. Unfortunatley most of the lettered boards are replaced with icons, giving most of the tourists can’t read Dutch. But the big yellow signposting are still a global icon of airport signposting.

Logo of Expo Osaka ‘70

For over 25 years Total Design did the manual for Randstad, a Dutch temporary employment agency. Even today the logo with the stylised doubled R is a recognizable form for the Dutch.

Total Design did a great deal of graphics for Stedelijk Museum.

The exhibition Wim Crouwel – A graphic odyssey is shown at the Design Museum in London, UK until the 3rd of July.