paula - hard werken in the 70s

'I don't think anything designed should be considered as art. It's not only about the experimentation with form. There is always a client'.

This dutch graphic design company and its designers where way ahead of there time in the 70s.

Rick Vermeulen was born in Schiedam, the Netherlands in 1950. He studied graphic design at the Rotterdam Academy, graduating in 1972. From 1975, he worked regularly for the publisher Bert Bakker and was a participant in Rotterdam's Graphic Workshop, where designers and artists produced material for cultural organisations in the city and events such as the Rotterdam Film Festival. From 1978-82, Vermeulen was an editor of Hard Werken magazine, along with Willem Kars, Henk Elenga, Gerard Hadders and Tom van den Haspel. The cultural tabloid made a considerable national impact and the group became a design studio operating under the name Hard Werken, with each designer supervising his own projects.

In Holland, Hard Werken is viewed as one of the more influential design companies. It showed a different attitude towards the existing design world, and it has definitely left its mark here.





What is particularly striking is the continuous urge to innovate, the repeated search for another way and the refusal to be satisfied with a fixed style or individual character.This is apparent from their innumerable dust jackets, posters postage stamps, but also from their designs for interiors, stage sets and exhibitions.