Experimental Jetset is a graphic design agency founded in 1997 by Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen when they graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.
This Dutch agency produces items as diverse as posters, T-shirts, warning signs and publications.
Inspired by Guy Debord’s lecture on “show society”, they work non-representatively, creating objects that function not as images but through their basic material quality. They draw their inspiration from graphic designed Bob Gill and plastic sculptor Richard Price, as well as from the rock culture from which they took their name: “Experimental Jetset” refers to an album by Sonic Youth.
For the CENTQUATRE, their thoughts have concentrated on its visual identity; they have been sensitive to the geometric forms that evoke pre-industrial aesthetics and the shapes of the brick or metallic architecture. Drawing inspiration from Walter Benjamin’s work “Paris Capital in the 19th Century”, they have combined references to the Parisian Passages, the “flâneur” (city wanderer) and the urban landscape to produce slogans that they have expressed in a direct meeting with the street.
A few key references:
- Catalogue and signs for the Elysian Fields exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in 2000.
- The “John-Paul-Ringo-George” T-shirt produced in 2001 for a Japanese name with reference to a rock group. This T-shirt sold in huge numbers and was widely imitated around the globe.
- Graphic identity for the Stedelijk Museum (SMCS) in Amsterdam in 2004.
- Logo for the Réunion des Musées Nationaux in 2006.
- Collective (including Colette in 2007) and individual exhibitions (including Kemistry Gallery in London in 2007).
