Revue Faire #38: A debate: Jan van Toorn, Wim Crouwel

Our scene is set in the Museum Fodor in Amsterdam on November 9th, 1972. We are told that it was “smoky, noisy and crowded”, and that the gathered audience made its presence felt through “frequent shouting”. The center of this fevered arena hosted the encounter between two Graphic Designers, two graphistes, two typographers, Wim Crouwel and Jan Van Toorn, in a country where their voices carry, where their thinking is important. A meeting, a conversation, or rather a confrontation, a controversy, it has been described as a debate, one that characterizes the way in which our discipline was represented in the 1980s and that continues to echo today.