Gert Dumbar: Gentleman Maverick of Dutch Design

Gert Dumbar (1940) is one of the most influential—and colourful—graphic designers in the postwar design field, both in the Netherlands and abroad. As a young partner in Tel Design, he designed one of the most iconic symbols in the Dutch public domain, the logo for the Dutch National Railways, NS, to which he has added countless designs for other clients with his own Studio Dumbar. Applauded or reviled, Studio Dumbar has left an indelible mark on Dutch and international visual culture.

Dumbar produced a vast amount of work, for an enormously varied clientele, from avant-garde theatres to the central government, from hospitals to multinationals. That work and the Werdegang of its namesake are now—for the first time—described and interpreted with great verve by the two authors in a richly illustrated book.