Winter 2025
Gentleman’s relish [EXTRACT]
Gert Dumbar
Studio Dumbar
Bob van Dijk
Robert Nakata
Ton van Bragt
Edward McDonald
Allen Hori
Martin Venezky
Jan Jancourt
Studio Renate Boere
Lex van Pieterson
Reviews
Gert Dumbar: Gentleman Maverick of Dutch Design
By Max Bruinsma and Leonie ten Duis Designed by Studio Renate Boere Published by Valiz, €37.50, £39.50 Reviewed by Rick Poynor
The Dutch are past masters at celebrating their major graphic designers with serious biographical studies, but one key figure of the late twentieth-century Dutch scene has been overlooked until now. Gert Dumbar, founder of the formidable Studio Dumbar in The Hague, retired in 2003 at the relatively early age of 63, feeling he was in danger of repeating himself. While Studio Dumbar continued with his name, it became a different kind of company operating in a much-changed climate. The exemplary, mostly pre-digital achievements of the studio, made possible by Dumbar’s playfully anarchic leadership, are now at risk of being forgotten. For anyone committed to the expressive cultural possibilities of graphic design, the studio’s highly original, award-decorated projects of the 1980s still have plenty to teach us – perhaps more so today than ever.
Gert Dumbar: Gentleman Maverick of Dutch Design is the latest design monograph from the Amsterdam publisher Valiz – with far-sighted support from three cultural foundations. It follows similarly hefty and detailed volumes from Valiz about Jurriaan Schrofer and Hard Werken. All these books deserve close attention because they offer a very different editorial model from the luxury-first, crowd-funded vanity productions that now hold sway. Valiz’s well illustrated studies are interestingly designed, but they put the emphasis where it most needs to be: on original and intensive archival research and extended critical investigation.
Dumbar is without doubt a special case. In the book’s nicely chosen first photo, he confronts the reader with his head back and an easy, open-mouthed smile. He looks like he is having fun, but the folded arms are resolute. In a second portrait over the page, from the same photoshoot, the head tilts forward more assertively. Dumbar appears to be wryly amused with himself and, once again, unstoppable.

He was always a social animal. He possessed an impish sense of humour, a twinkle in his eye, bags of charm, and he knew how to use them. The societal and economic forces routinely stressed by historians might have created conditions in which Studio Dumbar’s work could emerge, but that lift-off only happened because Dumbar had the warm, outgoing manner needed to attract and inspire a team of talented designers, on whom he bestowed great freedom, and the interpersonal aptitude and cunning to seduce all kinds of clients.
Rick Poynor, writer, Eye founder
Read the full version in Eye no. 107 vol. 27, 2025

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