BEN BOS
Graphic Design (NL) FRIDAY 5th – 10AM
Website
Dubbed a ‘renaissance’ man of the creative world, Bos has been a journalist, copywriter, designer and art director over a career that spans five decades. Along the way, he carved a reputation as one of the greats of corporate identity design. A retrospective show in 2000 featured over 100 of his logotypes, many of which have stood the test of time – his classic Ranstad logo has been in use since 1966. Just think, that’s three years before the moon landing happened. How long does your work last?
Ben Bos kicks off OFFSET 2013. We have an in-depth and revealing interview with Bos conducted by Conor Clarke of Design Factory coming in our brochure. Here’s an excerpt:
CC: Your logo for the Randstad Uitzendbureau was created around the same time Wim Crouwel was experimenting with the New Alphabet, a font based on the limitations of the computer screen. Was this perhaps an influence on the Randstad ‘r’ symbol?
BB: Many people share this feeling with you, but the Randstad ‘r’ is just another sans serif letter – the great difference with the ‘New’ version was that I used circular elements to make it more refined, far less academic and basic. And of course, I mirrored it to create the symbol, which is more human, like arms reaching out. I added an emotional element to the design. The circular parts were chosen because I also wanted to address the very high percentage of female temporaries in those early days of employment services.
Over the years, I came to the conclusion that the great difference between Wim’s approach and my own was that I considered ‘emotion’ as a real and valuable aspect of the functionalist philosophy we shared. It took a long time before I realised that my approach was different, but no less valuable.
