Hasta La Ideas

OK, this is a big one: an artist’s proof of Blanka’s lovingly produced 2008 reprint of the classic Wim Crouwel Vormgevers poster, signed on the reverse by Wim himself. Bid on it now to benefit Comic Relief.

Mark Blamire of Blanka was first introduced to Dutch designer Wim Crouwel in 2006 by Tony Brook of Spin. Blamire invited Crouwel to participate in his 1 An Exhibition In Mono project. It was during the exhibition’s stint in Dublin that Blamire asked Crouwel, also in Dublin at the time, if he would allow Blanka to reprint his most famous poster, Vormgevers. Crouwel gave permission but explained that the artwork would need to be redrawn and recreated in Illustrator as the original artwork from 1968 no longer existed.

Blanka bought an original from a Swiss dealer then set about faithfully reproducing every line and every mistake (a process that we documented here) for his new edition, endorsed by Crouwel.

“It’s easy to forget how difficult it must have been to create a poster of this complexity without the use of modern day computer equipment,” says Blamire. “Here you can see the pen skips of the Rotring in the 1968 original version of the poster. Whilst we spent over 50 hours retouching this poster to restore it to a printable state, we also retained all of the imperfections in the hand-crafted original artwork.”

To benefit Comic Relief Blanka has donated an artist’s proof, signed by Crouwel to be auctioned on ebay.

You can bid for it here.