Richard Niessen / Niessen & DeVries

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Before forming Niessen & DeVries with Esther DeVries in 2005, Richard Niessen described his work as “typographic masonry”—an apt representation of his richly layered, almost architectural approach. In their projects as a duo, they continue to explore “the tension between structure and going overboard” for clients including the Stedelijk Museum, the Dutch post office, and French railways SNCF.

SKETCHING FULFILLS MANY roles: It can serve as an outlet for excess creativity or provide a repository for ideas too good to risk losing. In Niessen & DeVries’s work, where formalist rigor collides head-on with areas of intense pattern and multilayered information, sketching acts as an organizational tool, helping the designers manage overlapping layers of communication and work out production details. Niessen refers to creating “a distinct language [or a] secret vocabulary” within his design work; his sketches are a vital link between his ideas and the final piece.

“We start with some hand sketches, then we try to work things out a little bit on the computer and we develop it from there, drawing on top of printouts and ping-ponging between screen and hand. I could never work only on the computer; the brain–hand link is very important. At least it is to me, as I only started working on the computer when I was 23.”

Though he acknowledges his sketches have a certain charm, Niessen prefers the finished piece to the drawing that spawned it—not surprising in work that so exuberantly celebrates unique materials and production techniques. “But what gets lost along the way,” he says, “is the personal hand, and lately we’re trying to keep that in the work, as we gain more confidence in our drawings.”

Between Ulm and Amsterdam
Poster

Forum Typografie

“On June 15, 2007, we gave a lecture in Bremen at the Twenty-Third Forum Typografie. The theme was ‘Between Ulm and Amsterdam.’ We had never heard of Ulm (a German design school of the 1960s), so to do something with the theme was difficult. We started reading about Ulm in preparation for designing a poster. For us, Ulm came down to a battle between aesthetes and moralists. We think that in our work, the two blend. That’s why we made a poster with both words, which can be hung in two ways.”

—Richard Niessen

Vouwblad #4
Periodical

“Vouwblad is a series of publications that visualize the passion within the graphic industry and show the beauty the combination of text, image, materials, and color can produce. This series is an initiative of LenoirSchuring printers in Amstelveen, The Netherlands. The size of the print sheet is always the same: a little less than 50 × 70 cm, folded twice. We were asked to design Vouwblad No. 4, and for us, the visualization of this passion resulted in a festoon of the characters V-O-U-W-B-L-A-D. The characters themselves and the patterns used on them are taken from our collection of inspirational photographs: floor tiles, architecture, game boards, street signage, and of course festoons. Those photographs are printed on the inside of the envelope in which the festoon was sent.”

—Richard Niessen

SNCF 70th Anniversary
Poster

“In 2007, we designed this poster for the French railways SNCF to celebrate their seventieth year of existence. From each country the train services—Switzerland, England, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and France—a designer was asked to create a poster to be exhibited in the Grand Palais. We decided to use the phrase Donner au train des idées d’avance (‘Think of the train first’) and to make a panorama of it. The poster shows the panorama through a window of the train, like a movie, frame by frame, passing by. We used the colors and the patterns of the national flags of the eight countries for the eight words in the slogan.”

—Richard Niessen