Linda van Deursen: never buy a book because it is beautiful

One of the things we love most about publishing is collaborating with designers. They are a particular kind of human. There is something almost altruistic about the practice. They bring the same care and seriousness to their work as any artist, yet it is always bound up with the work of others. They also tend to have very good stationery.

For Robby Müller’s Polaroids, we were fortunate to work with the legendary Dutch designer Linda van Deursen, who previously designed all of Robby’s books alongside Andrea Müller-Schirmer. For us it felt like stepping into a conversation that had been unfolding for decades.

Linda lives and works in Amsterdam, where she founded Mevis & van Deursen with Armand Mevis in 1987. Since then, the studio has worked extensively with cultural institutions, producing identities for places such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as designing beautiful books for artists, photographers, architects, and designers.

Linda is a former head of the graphic design department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and, since 2003, a senior critic at Yale School of Art in New Haven.

STANLEY/BARKER: What was the first book you remember really meaning something to you?

Linda van Deursen,: That was “El Lissitzky, Life, Letters, Texts” by his partner Sophie Lissitzky- Kuppers. I found it in the library at the art school where I was studying in 1980. I did not know anything about graphic design, nor book design, but I was fascinated
by this book and kept borrowing it. It is still one of my favourite books as it is such
a rich book in terms of information, it also contains facsimile prints of one of
Lissitzky’s brochures, it uses multiple papers in a functional way, and does not feel
pretentious at all.

SB: Book design is such a particular field. How did you find your way into it?

LVD: In 1986 I started a collaboration with Armand Mevis and we occasionally received commissions to design books. We loved to experiment and made some rather “wild” books early on. With the arrival of the Apple computer the role of the designer changed dramatically and it also gradually transformed traditional publishing. In the early 2000s we started to work more regularly for a small publishing house called Artimo who published books by young emerging artists. We closely collaborated with these artists and usually had full responsibility and control over these publications. It was a liberating and productive time as everything seemed possible. I gradually developed an understanding of the book as a space to communicate ideas and practises of artists.

SB: When you begin a new project, do you usually have a clear idea from the outset,
or does the form emerge as you work?

LVD: I prefer to be involved with a project early on, not only as a designer but also as an editor. Usually the content drives the overall design decisions such as the dimensions, amount of pages, binding and so on. But I also like to spend time with the work and I have a tendency to develop typography, lay-out and ideas for the cover more gradually while working on the document.

 

SB: Can an ugly book still be a good book?

LVD: Of course! I never buy a book because it is beautiful, but rather for what is in it. Who decides what is ugly and beautiful? Nowadays “ugly” books might even be hard to find, as everyone seems to agree on certain aesthetics of design and production? I personally would not mind if designers and publishers would take more risks and push the boundaries of graphic design and bookmaking.

 

SB: How did your collaboration with Andrea Müller Schirmer begin?

SVD: Around 2007 Marietta de Vries and I had the idea to make a publication around the work of Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller. It took us six years to make this book “Cinematography Robby Müller”, but during that time we got to know Robby and his partner Andrea really well. After Robby passed away Annet Gelink and Andrea asked me to design a book coinciding with a first exhibition of his polaroids at Gallery Annet Gelink. Since then we have worked on three more books on the work of Robby.

SB: Polaroids are so closely tied to their physicality. Does that material quality affect
the way you approach design?

LVD: Polaroid photos are interesting because they are actual physical objects, unlike photos from negatives or digital images. Yet, I've never wanted to fetishize the object as such. In the first polaroids books I choose to reproduce them true to their scale on really heavy paper, marking the white frame of the object by a glossy varnish. These books are small and intimate, close to the real objects but at the same time also very different. I like self evident choices and I hope they are also seen as interesting design choices. Reproduction always requires multiple translations and I find it more important to show this rather than to create the illusion of “realness”.