Karel Martens

Karel Martens (born 1939) is a Dutch freelance graphic designer, specialized in typography

Martens was born in Mook en Middelaar in 1939 and graduated from the Arnhem Academy of Art and Industrial Arts of the Netherlands in 1961. where he studied fine arts. He did not study graphic design because it was not considered a career at the time and therefore, did not exist as its own course of study. In school he took many classes such as painting, sculpture making, illustration, and publicity. Today he is recognized as one of the most influential practitioners in graphic design.

He started teaching at ArtEZ in Arnhem in 1977. In 1998 he, along with Wigger Bierma, founded the Werkplaats Typografie, a renowned Masters course for typography in Arnhem, Netherlands. Martens’s practice consists of designing and teaching. He is responsible for the design of architectural magazine OASE, in collaboration with current and former students. And he has designed books for publisher SUN in many varying formats. His work has also included designing coins, postage stamps and telephone cards for the Dutch government.

In 1996 he was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art, and in 2012 he won the Gerrit Noordzij Prize.

His book Printed Matter, published in 1996 with Jaap van Triest, was declared the best designed book in the world by the 1998 Leipzig Book Fair. His books, letterpress prints, and monoprints are highly revered and collectable.

He is included in a list of “one hundred of history's leading practitioners” in book “The Designer Says”: along with other notable practitioners of Graphic design.

Many of Martens’ work ranges from posters, to prints and to editorials, but all have a strong emphasis on typography. He had always been fascinated with language, mathematics and color and he finds a way to incorporate all these interests into his designs.

His work is not glamorous. In fact, his monoprints series was created using found metal objects taken from discarded car parts, disks, and other miscellaneous objects collected form the side of the road. He uses these objects to print ink on found paper. His methods are slow but very precise—he prints one colour per day, waits for it to dry, and prints the second colour the next day. By this method, Martens’ prints may take days or weeks to be completed.

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Wikipedia