Dutch Design Week 2022

Dutch Design Week Get Set... We're on a mission! was the theme of DDW22. A strong sense of urgency was clearly evident among the designers and studios participating. Thonik developed the new brand identity for Dutch Design Week and gave the twenty-year-old logo with the tulip a second life by styling it as the W in the event name. DDW’s tulip is a constellation of rectangles and quarter circles. These elements were also used in typographic experiments from the 1920s that were revised in 1963 by the late Wim Crouwel for the poster he created for painter Edgar Fernhout. It is this poster that studio Thonik took as inspiration for the new Dutch Design Week brand identity. Thonik expanded the 13 letters on the poster to produce an entire font. For this we teamed up with The Foundry Types. Animating the newly developed font for the DDW site felt natural. When the letters started moving, the underlying grid became visually present. A bridge was forged between the aesthetics of the past and the design language of the future: motion design. DDW22 had great appeal, also to international visitors, policymakers and organizations that recognize the power of design. A successful edition, in which participants and visitors inspired each other with positive stories that fed confidence and optimism.