Joost Grootens, Netherlands

AGI member since 2010

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Joost Grootens is a graphic designer, educator and researcher. Based in Amsterdam (NL) and Biel/Bienne (CH), his studio SJG designs books, maps, typefaces, spatial installations and digital information environments. SJG won numerous prizes for their designs. Among them the Golden Letter and two gold medals in the Best Book Design from all over the World competition, and twice the Dutch Design Award for Graphic Design. A monograph about SJG’s work titled ‘I swear I use no art at all’ was published by 010 Publishers in 2010.

Joost is Professor of Artistic Research in Visual Design at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, and also Professor of Information Architecture at the Master Editorial Design of the Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche in Urbino.

Joost studied architectural design at Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam and obtained his doctorate at Leiden University. His research addresses the transformation of the fields and practices of graphic design and mapmaking resulting from technological changes in tools to record, create, edit, produce and disseminate visual information.

Design work by Joost Grootens

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    Joost Grootens, Netherlands (2010)

    Joost Grootens is a graphic designer, educator and researcher. Based in Amsterdam (NL) and Biel/Bienne (CH), his studio SJG designs books, maps, typefaces, spatial installations and digital information environments. SJG...

    Read full biography
    Joost Grootens, Netherlands (2010)

    Joost Grootens is a graphic designer, educator and researcher. Based in Amsterdam (NL) and Biel/Bienne (CH), his studio SJG designs books, maps, typefaces, spatial installations and digital information environments. SJG won numerous prizes for their designs. Among them the Golden Letter and two gold medals in the Best Book Design from all over the World competition, and twice the Dutch Design Award for Graphic Design. A monograph about SJG’s work titled ‘I swear I use no art at all’ was published by 010 Publishers in 2010.

    Joost is Professor of Artistic Research in Visual Design at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, and also Professor of Information Architecture at the Master Editorial Design of the Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche in Urbino.

    Joost studied architectural design at Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam and obtained his doctorate at Leiden University. His research addresses the transformation of the fields and practices of graphic design and mapmaking resulting from technological changes in tools to record, create, edit, produce and disseminate visual information.

    Publications

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    Blind Maps and Blue Dots

    (2021)

    • Joost Grootens

    Lars Müller Publishers

    Blind Maps and Blue Dots, through texts and visualisations, explores the blurring of the binary distinction between producing and using, looking at three mapmaking practices as examples – the Blue Dot, the location function in Google Maps; the Strava Global Heatmap, a world map showing the activities of a fitness app; and the “Situation in Syria” maps, a regularly updated map of the Syrian conflict made by an Amsterdam teenager – ultimately offering a whole new approach to graphic design.

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