Louis Reith. Geometry of Winter

Dutch design. I won­der if any­one who has at least slight­est interest in any kind of design, hadn‘t heard of this word com­bin­a­tion. I dare to doubt it. Netherland‘s art academies, known for for­ging one of the best future design­ers, attracts a lot of interest. Constructive design style became Netherlands’s trade­mark. In one or the other way, encoun­ters with design com­ing from this coun­try are pretty com­mon. And each time it‘s a pleas­ant sur­prise. It looks like Dutch people aren‘t going to let this qual­ity trade­mark gather dust. But this time, I sug­gest you give your­self a por­tion of con­struct­ive graphic images and take a look at one of the lesser known mod­ern pioneer‘s Louis Reith works.

Louis Reith is a young artist and graphic designer from Netherlands. But his cre­at­ive growth was affected by Belgium too, where he was inspired by local illus­trat­ors while work­ing in one of the advert­ise­ment agen­cies. His graphic style par­tially formed there. In 2007, he moved back to Netherlands, where he com­bines Art & Crossmedia stud­ies, job as freel­ance graphic designer and tak­ing part in vari­ous per­sonal and group shows.

While look­ing at his works, I try to under­stand and find a source of its mag­netic attrac­tion and charm. It looks as his for­mula is pretty simple: old book cover with appro­pri­ate aged tex­ture covered in hand drawn geo­met­rical shapes and lines. Simple and down to earth squares and tri­angles here obtains entirely new look. Sallow book paper, by its own gives vin­tage graph­ics sen­sa­tion. We can sense influ­ence from Dutch icon Piet Zwart and Bauhaus too. When most cre­at­ors try to rein­vent the wheel, it seems like the point of it all is just hid­den in unex­pec­ted simplicity.

However, Reith‘s works mostly remind of winter‘s minus fif­teen Celsius frost, dark, dread­ful machinery of metal industry and dis­tilled water. You can add atmo­sphere of drafts­man­ship lec­ture. It is clearly presen­ted and reserved on meta­phors design. To sim­plify – bold and true. Or is it the evid­ence of com­plex forms and abund­ance of color not being clearly the focal point of effect­ive graph­ics and design? On this occa­sion, I would wish every­one to absorb a little bit of constructivism.

About author:

Aleksandr Pasevin
Aleksandr Pasevin is Art Pit’s strategist and designer, responsible for organization’s creative solutions. Aleksandr is also actively interested in new technologies, their connection with creativity and usage in cultural organizations. Aleksandr dislikes long discussions and considerations, and he mostly expresses his opinion quickly about whet... Read further >