Revue Faire: n°38

Our scene takes place in the Fodor Museum in Amsterdam on 9 November 1972. We are told that it was “smoky, noisy and crowded”, and that the gathered audience made its presence felt with “frequent shouts”. The centre of this feverish arena was the meeting of two graphic designers, two typographers, Wim Crouwel and Jan Van Toorn, in a country where their voices carry, where their thoughts are important. A meeting, a conversation, or rather a confrontation, a controversy, it has been described as a debate, which characterises the way our discipline was represented in the 1980s and which continues to echo today.