Kunstletters renewed: what inspired designer Lauren Bouden?
Thonet & Design / De Oase van Matisse
These two books taught me the same thing, each in its own way. For the catalog of the exhibition on Thonet chairs, Jacob Wise (for Bureau Borsche) designed a typeface with the same formal characteristics as the chairs. Without showing a single chair, you understand what the book is about. To me, graphic design is a representation of the world before you, reduced to its essence. Mevis & Van Deursen did the same with Matisse: they reduced his collages to planes that together form a system. In this way, they interpret the art without imitating it. For the design of *Kunstletters*, I looked in the same way at what was literally right in front of me: my work table covered with test prints, sketches, and notebooks piled on top of one another. The grid for *Kunstletters* was actually already there; I just had to see it.
Thonet & Design, Die Neue Sammlung, München, 2019. Design: Bureau Borsche.
De Oase van Matisse, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2015. Design: Mevis & Van Deursen.
“With every issue of Kunstletters, I want to ask myself: Can you sense the joy of play that went into creating it?”
7 van Comme des Garçons
"This little book represents my love for small press and zine culture. A book doesn’t have to be a hardcover bible to be a valuable object. There’s a right form for every kind of content. For *Kunstletters*, that’s an object with a DIY feel—something that fits the atmosphere of the studio. What also moves me about *7* is its rhythm: different formats, images that overlap to create new compositions. It showed me how to translate the chaos of the workbench into print. In *Kunstletters*, that rhythm is found in the placement of the images and the white space. And in the tear-off edges: some pages are designed to be torn out and hung up in your own studio."
7, Comme des Garçons, 2010.
Jazz-posters by Niklaus Troxler
“For decades, Troxler translated the music of the Willisau Jazz Festival into posters. Each poster is different—cut out, written, and drawn. His work is visual improvisation, free and unpolished. That sense of freedom inspired me to create the handwritten letters in *Kunstletters*. For me, that’s the joy of creating: just doing it, without a plan, and seeing what emerges.”
Jazz Blvd. Niklaus Troxler Posters, Lars Müller Publishers, 1999.
PIN-UP magazine, Body
“For an issue centered on the theme of the body, PIN-UP commissioned a typeface based on photos of Travis Scott, under the creative direction of Ben Ganz. The body literally becomes the letter. That’s playing with content: the form conveys the theme, and it’s just plain fun. With every issue of Kunstletters, I want to ask myself these questions: Is the design in tune with the content? Can you sense the joy of creation that went into making it?”
PIN-UP 34, Body, S/S 2023.
