For more than twenty years, the billboard in front of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam is a stage for printed art, design and (school)announcements. Throughout the years it also functioned as a showcase of what is possible at the school’s screenprinting shop, seducing students to come down and try this versatile technique for themselves. Due to the farewell of Kees Maas, the screen print workshop supervisor and one of the original initiators of this billboard, ex-student Laslo Strong was asked to edit and design a book about the billboard as an outlet of the education around printing. Besides a vast archive of images and prints, the book assembles several interview records about the history of the project and silkscreening, with former students and teachers like José Brouwer, Harmen Liemburg, Elisabeth Rafstedt & Johanna Ehde and ofcourse Kees Maas himself
www.instagram.com/rietveld_billboard/
The starting point of the design was to explore different printing techniques in offset printing such as neon CMYK, iris printing and overprinting of two colors. The typefaces are made by former students (OPS) and relate to both the history of the school as well as to methods of stencil cut printing often applied in the silksceen printing. The dust cover evolves in different colors along the edition, making every book a unique copy.
designer: Laslo Strong
©2019 Gerrit Rietveld Academie
softcover, dust-jacket 280 x 218 mm, pages160, English
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Upfront was part of Radical Play postershow and Test Press Books|2| / 2022