Design Indaba Conference 2014: Two Radically Different Versions of the ABCs (from Experimental Jetset and Alt Group’s Dean Poole)
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As these things go, Day One of the 2014 Design Indaba Conference was a bit behind schedule from the get-go. Experimental Jetset acknowledged as much in their regimented presentation that morning: after introducing themselves by way of banter, Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen explained that they’d be spending the rest of their 40-minutes time slot by sharing their influences from A to Z, spending one minute on each topic. Taking the notion of a timed talk to its logical extreme, the Dutch trio went so far as to include 60-second countdown timers on each slide—a nod, perhaps, to their cerebral approach to graphic design.
L: Stolk’s parents were founding members of the Provo anarchist movement (’65–’67); R: Invitation for Wim Crouwel: Architectures Typographiques
Of course, it didn’t play out that way: Stolk clocked in “Anarchy” in exactly 60 seconds, but from “The Beatles” on, it was clear that the concept was a tad overambitious. (On the other hand, when it seemed that one of them would finish earlier than the 60 seconds on a couple of the letters, he or she would knowingly stretch the explanation.) Still, anyone familiar with their work could have guessed what “H” would be: they’ve been typecast (in a manner of speaking) as strict Helveticists since their memorable turn in Gary Hustwit’s 2007 documentary on the ubiquitous typeface. Adherents to this day, van den Dungen duly noted that “We signed our own death sentence… in Helvetica.”
Dean Poole, on the other hand, gushed about letterforms as archetypes; the self-effacing New Zealander’s presentation which followed lunch on the third and final day of the conference, was rife on wordplay and visual puns, his understated punchlines deadpanned to a tee. Indeed, language and its mode of mechanical representation figure heavily into his work (where Sagmeister turns things into typography, Poole does the opposite) as the founder of Auckland-based studio Alt Group. Hence his rather more rapid ‘characterization’ of the letters of the alphabet—set in Futura, if I remember correctly—as ideograms, which, when juxtaposed with the Amsterdammers’ ABCs, results in a series of non sequiturs:
I didn’t catch Dean’s versions of “P” and “U” and I haven’t been able to get in touch with him; leave a comment if you happen to know what they are…
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