Gerrit Rietveld Academie brochure

When I was asked to design the brochure for the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, I was heavily invested in the architectural space of the school’s buildings for a wayfinding system I was working on. The main building, Rietveld’s biggest and last architectural work, was designed in between 1950 and 1963 and currently hosts most of the Bachelor courses and workshops of the academy. Two other buildings on the academy grounds, the Benthem-Crouwel building and the Fedlev building, were constructed in 2003 and 2019 respectively.

I found the intersecting planes of the architectural shapes of each building to resemble the different backgrounds, both cultural and artistic, of all who cross paths and cross-pollinate in this small academy. The zigzag brochure can both be read as a booklet and as well as a fold-out, mirroring the welcoming, living room atmosphere created by the GRA students and staff alike. The brochure is printed in Dutch on the front, and English on the back.

The illustrated architectural works are accompanied by the display typeface Anthony, published by Velvetyne. The lettershapes, existing out of small building blocks, give the right balance between playfulness and friendliness that is representative of the atmosphere at the academy, while remaining legible and accessible.

Supporting the display typeface is Mack, a welcoming and comfortable to read sans, published by Blaze Type, which takes its inspiration from the geometric typefaces that were being made around the time of Gerrit Rietveld’s architectural works.

The booklet is offset printed in two colours on 90gsm Bio Top by Libertas Pascal in Utrecht in an edition of 3,000 copies.