Piet Schreuders 

It’s a cold Sunday evening in January 1972. The reporters Wim Noordhoek, Yolande Nusselder, and Rogier Proper ring the bell at Victorieplein number 44 in Amsterdam. Piet Schreuders opens the door and a little later they fill his small first-floor student room and interview him for the youth magazine Aloha about his self-published magazine Wolkenkrabber (Skyscraper). They propose not only that Piet lay out the interview, but that he will also design the issue’s cover. Not long after, Piet finds himself working at Aloha.

Piet on Parklaan, Rotterdam, 1955. On the left is the ‘Muizenpolder’ and – out of frame – Villa ‘Rozenlust’. Photo: W.P.H. Schreuders

Having arrived in Amsterdam in the fall of 1969 to study law, 18-year-old Piet – at the insistence of his father – joined the conservative Amsterdam Student Association and was put in charge of the graphic design of the club’s Honestum magazine. After three months he quit both the student association and his studies and registered for Dutch literature studies for the next academic year. The intervening months gave him more than enough time to visit cheap cinemas to watch the old Hollywood movies he loves, track down the music from those films in the Concerto record store on Utrechtsestraat, and find the books those films were based on as paperbacks at the outdoor Waterlooplein flea market. In short, Piet explored the world, in Amsterdam. He also traveled back and forth to Hilversum – the city of Dutch television and radio stations – to attend radio programs open to the public, such as VPRO-vrijdag (VPRO Friday), which lasted the entire afternoon and evening with live music and reports. This is where he met the radio producer Wim Noordhoek, among others.

His second study was a better fit; it was here where he learned how to do research and became interested in the work of the Dutch author W.F. Hermans. With some fellow students, he started Wolkenkrabber, a playful literary magazine with student humor and drawings of the twelve-story apartment building from 1931 – commonly known as the ‘Wolkenkrabber’ – which was located opposite Schreuders’ address on Victorieplein. Because photocopying was expensive, the circulation was intentionally kept low, with the editors carefully selecting the recipients, a small group of like-minded people, including Noordhoek and Hermans. The latter partly because the Wolkenkrabber appears in his novel De Tranen der Acacia’s. 

As a ten-year-old, Piet Schreuders was fond of the section ‘Kris Kras Nonsense Newspaper’ in the youth magazine Kris Kras, nonsense in the form of a newspaper, originally founded by Jean Dulieu and later taken over by ‘Marc V.’, a pseudonym of editor J. van der Weijden. This column turned out to be a recurrent source of inspiration for Schreuders.

Children’s magazine Kris Kras
This novel is set in the Second World War, during which Piet’s parents got to know each other. His mother, a librarian at the Amsterdam Public Library, frequently lent out sheet music to a young amateur pianist who had graduated as an engineer in Delft and was working at PTT, the national Post, Telegraph, and Telephone company. They got married and shortly after the war moved to the stately villa ‘Rozenlust’, located on the Parklaan in Rotterdam. Their only child Piet was born there in 1951. When he was two, his ground floor bedroom was flooded due to the infamous February North Sea storm of 1953. Piet’s childhood was otherwise carefree, partly due to the large garden of the villa and a subscription to the biweekly children’s magazine Kris Kras. This publication was the responsible alternative to popular comic magazines such as Donald Duck and Robbedoes (Spirou magazine), whose stories were translated into Dutch and which Piet also read. In Kris Kras, Piet particularly loved the stories and drawings by Jean Dulieu, as well as the section ‘Kris Kras Kolder Krant’ (Criss-Cross Nonsense Newspaper), a page with nonsensical, silly, and funny items, laid out like a newspaper. Piet was also attracted to the silent 8-mm black and white Laurel and Hardy films that were often shown at friends’ birthday parties. In 1958, after seven years at Rozenlust, his father was transferred to the PTT research center in Leidschendam and promoted as a member of the Central Board of Directors. The family moved to Voorburg, where Piet attended primary and secondary school.

Throughout the 1960s, young people made themselves heard and expressed themselves through clothing, hairstyle, lifestyle, and also through various kinds of media, such as publications and music. For Piet, this meant hours of listening to VPRO Radio, the left-wing broadcaster whose critical, thoughtful, and humorous attitudes he embraced with great enthusiasm. As a devoted fan of the Beatles, he subscribed to the Dutch fanzine Chains, which Har van Fulpen had started on a small offset press in 1967. Piet responded to Van Fulpen’s call for illustrations with a few drawings, accompanied by the comment: “I can’t draw very well, but what is currently in the magazine is rubbish anyway.” Van Fulpen published them – Piet’s first appearance in print – and the two would continue to work together after the dissolution of Chains in 1971.

As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, protest movements in Amsterdam – such as the Provos – gave way to hippies such as the Kabouterbeweging (literally: Gnome Movement) who proclaimed the Oranjevrijstaat (Orange Free State). This playful political movement published the Kabouterkrant (Kabouter Paper), to which Schreuders provided graphic assistance. Frank Steenhagen taught him to prepare layouts for printing by cutting out typed texts and illustrations, placing them with the help of a ruler and securing them with tire-patch glue. In the meantime, he also made jingles for VPRO Radio in Hilversum together with Noordhoek, who gave him a tape recorder to report on the chaotic Kabouter Movement meetings. Schreuders couldn’t decide which medium he liked better: radio or print.

Hitweek and Aloha
Five years earlier, in 1965, Peter ‘Better long-haired than short-sighted’ Muller had started the music magazine Beatbox. Fluxus artist Willem de Ridder, having seen the attempt Muller was making to reach young people, made contact and the two set up the magazine Hitweek. The printer Ruud Schoonman, who foresaw a growing market because young people had more money to spend, bought a house for the editors to create their magazine, which would reach a circulation of approximately 30,000 copies. The core of the editorial team consisted of De Ridder and Marjolein Kuijsten. Their contributions were alternately supplemented with articles by journalists such as Wim Noordhoek, Rogier Proper, Jan Donkers, Laurie Langenbach, and Koos Zwart, but also with contributions from readers. It was from Hitweek that Schreuders would later adopt the editorial formula of letting readers read each other’s writings.

In 1969, De Ridder morphed Hitweek into Aloha, shifting its editorial emphasis from music to images. Their expressiveness increased due to improved printing technology for illustrations, posters, record covers, and comics, including American underground comics by Robert Crumb and Victor Moscoso – work that inspired Schreuders – but also work by comic artists such as Joost Swarte, Mark Smeets, Harry Buckinx, Ever Meulen, Peter Pontiac and Evert Geradts. The latter would found the comic magazine ‘Tante Leny Presenteert’ (Aunt Leny Presents) in 1971. De Ridder’s creative method of publishing was an inspiration to many and was also made possible by the fact that printing was becoming increasingly less expensive. It was do-it-yourself avant la lettre. 

Cover for Aloha, February 11, 1972. Drawn in black with blue and yellow as supporting colors. The drawing shows the ‘Twaalfverdiepingenhuis’ (Twelve-story House), alias ‘De Wolkenkrabber’ (The Skyscraper) in Amsterdam, as seen from Victorieplein 44.

From 1972 onwards, Schreuders works at Aloha three days per two weeks and is further taught graphically by De Ridder, who encourages visual experimentation, making the layout of each article and therefore each Aloha issue look different from the others. Schreuders draws covers, illustrations, and comics such as De guitenstreken van Pim en Propke (The pranks of Pim and Propke), De Avonturen van Frits Strik (The Adventures of Frits Strik) and – together with Aart Clerkx – Jan Tit. For Aloha he also contributes editorial elements, such as ‘De Krant’ with its nonsensical, silly, and funny items reminiscent of ‘Kris Kras Kolder Krant’.

De Poezenkrant 
In 1973, enthused by Aloha’s editorial and visual humor, Han Singels, photographer and editor of the left-wing opinion magazine De Nieuwe Linie, invites Schreuders, Clerkx, Noordhoek, Proper, and others to fill the magazine’s back page with their writings and drawings. After six months of Jan Tit’s Progressief Journaal (Jan Tit’s Progressive Journal), the editor-in-chief has had enough of this funniness. Meanwhile, the humor also disappears from Aloha, when the self-appointed editor-in-chief Koos Zwart shifts the magazine towards politics, which leads to a decline in circulation, causing publication to stop completely in 1974.

That same year, Rode van Plezier – the pet cat of Schreuders’ girlfriend, illustrator Mariet Numan – falls ill. He keeps their concerned friends informed of its medical recovery by sending them a copied A4 sheet with short, funny, and silly messages: a ‘nonsense newspaper’ written and drawn in pen. Although the cat recovers quickly, De Poezenkrant (The Cats’ Newspaper) gains a small and enthusiastic following, and Schreuders continues to send out new issues, now for the price of 65 cents each (the cost of copying plus postage). Because more and more friends of friends wish to receive the ‘news’ of cats, he switches to offset printing as of issue 11. The price increases with the number of pages and over time the circulation will eventually reach four thousand, of which approximately 1,600 are subscribers.

De Poezenkrant, No. 22, August, 1977; the headline is composed of the sans-serif font of the Los Angeles Times.

Over the years, regular sections emerge such as ‘Condolences!’ for deceased cats, the ‘Hague Dialogue’ by Françoise and Teun Berserik, and contributions from readers including W.F. Hermans, a confirmed cat-lover. There are illustrations by Franka van der Loo, Herwolt van Doornen, Mariet Numan, Aart Clerkx among, many others. Alongside the articles there are all kinds of ‘advertisements’ that do not sell anything to or for cats but only provide the desired newspaper-like visual atmosphere in the magazine. Because its content varies little from one issue to the next, Schreuders chooses to vary its appearance through font choice, typography, and layout. One issue is designed in the graphic style of an American newspaper, another mimics The New Yorker magazine, yet another an English paperback, and so on. Thematic issues are also published, for example about Dutch cats during the Second World War, about the cartoon character Felix the Cat, and De Krantenpoes (The Newspaper Cat). The latter, drawn by comic artist Peter Pontiac, is published simultaneously as one of the Little Golden Books, with Schreuders himself appearing in it as the layout man of a daily newspaper. Constantly surprising its readers, De Poezenkrant primarily expresses pleasure in magazine-making and is not essentially about cats, which is why the covers try to put off die-hard cat lovers.

Piet Schreuders as layout man of a newspaper, drawn by Peter Pontiac in De Krantenpoes (The Newspaper Cat) from the Little Golden Books series (also published as De Poezenkrant #50/51), 2004. 

When subscriber management starts taking too much of Schreuders’ time – in addition to him acting as ‘magazine director’ – so that he no longer has sufficient time for editing and design, he decides that the magazine will only be available in single-copy sales from 2019 onwards. In 2024, at issue number 70, after fifty years of De Poezenkrant (‘irregularly since 1974’), he decides to close the magazine he started as a 23-year-old student.

Veranda and Rijksmuseum Kunstkrant
In 1975, Schreuders and his fellow university students convince their professor Mat Roijakkers to give his Language Proficiency course the form of a newspaper: a quarterly journalistic writing course is the result. In the course, the students not only learn how to write intelligibly but also how to design a magazine and use screen-printing to reproduce it. Ten issues of this newspaper, Veranda, will be published, the articles written according to the editorial principles of Harold Evans, editor-in-chief of the Sunday Times. Somewhat incomprehensible headlines attract attention, which – through informative introductions – draw the reader into the articles. From now on, Schreuders will also apply this principle to his own publications.

That same year, the Amsterdam-based printer Frans Spruijt advises the Rijksmuseum to engage Schreuders in the design of their in-house art publication in an attempt to appeal to young people. Schreuders finds images of the Chicago Sun-Times in Evans’ journalistic handbook, which he adapts for the Rijksmuseum Kunstkrant (Rijksmuseum Art Newspaper), the layout of which will remain in use for sixteen years.

Furore
Following the closure of Aloha, Schreuders – craving the experience of creating, collaborating, and co-publishing a magazine – begins to work with like-minded comic artists, illustrators, and journalists Aart Clerkx, Franka van der Loo, and Laurie Langenbach, on what they dub ‘the most sophisticated publication in the world’. With The New Yorker magazine serving as its editorial and design inspiration, Furore features long articles in a classic three-column layout.

Cover for Furore, trial issue ‘minus three’, July 1975. Printed by Spruijt in three colors: black, red, and dark blue. The design was loosely based on the renowned British monthly magazine The Tatler. Illustration Jan Tit: Aart Clerkx

Once again, ‘advertisements’ appear that offer nothing other than an appropriate visual atmosphere to the magazine. Recurring editorial sections are the letters page ‘De postbode belt altijd 2x’ (The Postman Always Rings Twice), the editorial ‘Schreuders’ Digest’, and the section ‘Een Deur Moet Open of Dicht Zijn’ (A Door Must Be Open or Closed) with the subtitle ‘Dingen, personen en gebeurtenissen die van belang kunnen zijn voor de Furore-wereldopvatting’ (Things, persons and events that may be of importance for the Furore worldview). The latter section once again harks back to Schreuders’ beloved ‘Kris Kras Kolder Krant’, with its short, lame, and funny items. Furore articles are written solely out of writers’ personal enthusiasms and cover themes such as the music of LeRoy Shield, obscure and previously unknown locations of Beatles photo shoots, Belgian comics, covers of American paperbacks, and writers such as James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, and W.F. Hermans. As former The New Yorker editor-in-chief William Shawn once said of that publication: “If we think something is good or interesting, we post it and hope the readers will come along with us.” This is also one of the guiding principles of how Furore tries to find its audience.

Piet Schreuders with the mechanical of the section ‘Een Deur Moet Open of Dicht Zijn’ (A Door Must Be Open or Closed) for Furore 12, January 1979. A mechanical consisted of cut-out letters, strips of type, and rasterized images, which all were pasted onto cardboard and then photographed at an eighty percent reduced size for reproduction. Photo: Herwolt van Doornen, February 4, 1979

With the support of the Spruijt printing company, five pilot issues of Furore are released in the hope of attracting a publisher. After the first ‘real’ issue, Schreuders approaches Van Fulpen, who is willing to publish the magazine but with fewer pages, fewer print colors, and a lower frequency. This arrangement continues until the publication of the sixteenth issue in 1983, at which point, with expenses outweighing income, Van Fulpen informs the editors that after Furore 16, he will no longer act as publisher of the magazine. In the years that follow, Schreuders never loses hope, speaks with other publishers, among whom Vic van de Reijt advises him to self-publish the magazine. 

The long-delayed Furore 17 appears in 1991, with Schreuders as editor and layout man, and as a result the magazine increasingly reflects his own personal interests. The articles cover small, often-overlooked details that demand further research to complete people’s knowledge. Such as John Lennon’s glasses, the exact time and place when a photo was taken in an Amsterdam street in 1955, and how to translate the Mandarin ‘curse marks’ of the cartoon character Fantasio from the Belgian magazine Spirou. No subject seems to be too niche or too obscure. Schreuders can even dedicate an entire Furore issue to a single one of such topics, like the balloon’s trajectory through Paris in the 1956 film Le Ballon rouge (The Red Balloon), as well as one that follows the precise route of The Beatles’ Amsterdam boat tour in 1964. The ‘irregularly brilliant’ magazine, which he started when he was 24 years old, continues to this day and has now reached issue 29.

Illustration for Furore 21, 2013. The Rue Piat in Belleville, Paris, where the final scene of Le Ballon rouge takes place. The little boy Pascal is lifted by a bunch of balloons and floats away above the roofs of Paris. Which roofs were those exactly?

Cover for Furore 24, January 2019. ‘Beatles issue’ with in-depth research into the precise location of the famous photo by Fiona Adams that graced the cover of the Twist and Shout EP in July 1963. In which street were those chimneys and where was the photographer positioned?

Paperbacks U.S.A.
Throughout the 1970s Schreuders continued to scour shops and markets looking for old paperbacks (‘three for 25 cents’) and always came back with stacks. His knowledge and curiosity grew with his collection; he visited publishers in New York for further research, where the once responsible art directors referred him to the now-retired illustrators. Schreuders interviewed them and concluded that the work of Robert Jonas and James Avati rose above that of the others because of their ability to capture the essence of an entire novel in one image. In 1980, his research resulted in the book Paperbacks U.S.A., in which he describes the heyday of the paperback in the period from 1939 to 1959, providing insight into it with a chronological overview and a self-drawn map of Manhattan. English and Japanese translations followed, as well as an exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in 1981. In 2000, Schreuders directed the VPRO documentary James Avati: A Life in Paperbacks together with Koert Davidse. Five years later he wrote The Paperback Art of James Avati in collaboration with Kenneth Fulton.

Illustration in the style of the Dell ‘mapbacks’, showing the location of the paperback publishers in Manhattan between 1939 and 1959. Drawn for the book Paperbacks, U.S.A. Published by Loeb, 1981.

Lay In, Lay Out
In 1976, he assists Paul Mijksenaar with the design of the Christmas issue of Grafisch Nederland, the respected annual publication of the Koninklijk Verbond van Grafische Ondernemingen (Royal Association of Graphic Enterprises). That year’s edition has the theme ‘Freedom of the printing press’ and is edited by journalist Nico Scheepmaker. Schreuders writes the concluding article, ‘How to start your own newspaper’, in which he talks about the journalistic-romantic pleasure of designing a periodical with text, headlines, photos, illustrations, and advertisements. Because the design of this annual publication has little in common with the preferred modernist style of the era, the layout is judged as messy amateurism by those who like to express their opinions. Spruijt, on the other hand, invites Schreuders – on behalf of the G.J. Thieme Fund – to publish his thoughts on the current state of graphic design in the Netherlands.

Piet Schreuders (center) with designer Paul Mijksenaar and editor Nico Scheepmaker at the rotogravure presses of newspaper Het Parool on the occasion of the 1976 annual Grafisch Nederland publication, with the theme ‘Freedom of the printing press’.

Although he accepts it, he begins to dislike the assignment during the initial research phase and therefore later adds the subtitle Zijn ontwerpers misdadig?! (Are designers criminal?!) to the resulting publication, Lay In, Lay Out. Schreuders’ negative mood arose from what he views as mediocre to poor graphic design for the Dutch government. From telephone directories to postage stamps, designers trained in the Bauhaus tradition overestimate the usefulness of their modernist design, which narrows to a visual minimalism that conceals all kinds of different messages. “They obscure the content with ugly form and defend that ugly form with slick words. They are smooth talkers. They have already sold a hundred nice talks while they still have to make their first nice picture.” In his fierce argument, he personally accuses well-known designers of the decline of beauty in graphic design as a result of their uniform design: their ‘solutions’ are creating new problems. He substantiates his plea with thorough knowledge mixed with irony and humor, in the style of Hermans, who in turn praises Schreuders for his ‘delightful wantonness’. Apart from the critical points it makes, the pamphlet also offers the reader all kinds of graphic alternatives with at that time disused fonts such as Gill Sans, Cheltenham, Metro, and Tempo, as used in Anglo-Saxon and French typography, on record covers and film titles, government forms, or in Belgian cartoons. He shows these examples not out of a melancholic longing for bygone times but as inspiration to learn from the past. Just like vernacular design, the graphic voices of a society, which in any case already has a much larger and more varied production than the ‘accepted’ work of graphic designers trained at art academies. According to Schreuders, more visual freedom is needed to give the content a truly appropriate form.

Design sketch for the cover of the first issue of Lay In, Lay Out, May 1977. It shows that the graphic design craft was then practiced using graph paper, red masking tape, a snap-off knife, and cut-out letters, which also applies to this sketch.

In May of 1977, at the public presentation of Lay In, Lay Out – attended by graphic designer Wim Crouwel, one of the targets of his criticism – Schreuders puts his words into action by tearing a Crouwel-designed poster to pieces on stage. For many readers, his argument is the expression of ideas already dormant in society and therefore represents a turning point, after which those views will ultimately become commonplace, helping to make Lay In, Lay Out into a classic. To other readers, many of whom are established graphic designers, the publication seems harsh and negative, to which some respond strongly and make Schreuders a target of criticism.

Lay In, Lay Out is updated and republished in 1997, now with the subtitle En ander oud zeer (And other old sores) and an addendum that refutes the criticism of twenty years earlier. In addition to a modest anthology of his own work, he also includes other articles, such as ‘Taaltje, stijltje, kunstje; de eerste twintig jaar van Total Design’ (Language, style, and other tricks: the first twenty years of Total Design). This second edition brings a new awareness of the influence that Schreuders’ articles and work have had on Dutch design, which leads the Dutch design jury of the prestigious H.N. Werkmanprijs to award to him for his oeuvre that same year. Exactly twenty years later, in 2017, he concludes Lay In, Lay Out with the Definitieve volkseditie (Definitive people’s edition) with a thorough, richly annotated review in which he describes the developments that have taken place in society, his motivations as a designer, and reactions to the criticism that the original Lay In, Lay Out incited forty years earlier. 

Hollywood and Juinen
The thin sans serif font that Schreuders used for the handmade, cut-and-paste headlines of De Poezenkrant in the late 1970s, which he cut out from the American newspaper the Los Angeles Times. Curious about the typeface but unable to track down the name or any information about it while in Amsterdam, it works out well that director Theo Uittenbogaard wants to film him in Los Angeles for a documentary. On camera, the editors of the LA Times explain that the font is simply called ‘Sans Serif’. The camera continues to follow Schreuders, who discusses all kinds of fonts in Los Angeles, ending under the well-known ‘HOLLYWOOD’ letters while the credits he created himself run across the screen.

In this VPRO documentary, Hollywood at Last! – also published in book form – he also visits some of the locations used in the films of Laurel & Hardy. Twenty-two years later, he writes about the experience of making the documentary in detail in Furore 19, which in turn leads to the 1999 documentary De bril van Piet Schreuders (Piet Schreuders’ glasses). In this film, director Koert Davidse follows him back to Hollywood, where he visits recording locations and libraries, and interviews experts in his search for the original scores of LeRoy Shield, the long-forgotten composer of the background music for the Laurel & Hardy films.

Noordhoek, for whose radio program Piet Ponskaart Presenteert (Punch Card Pete Presents) Schreuders designs a poster in 1976, recommends him in 1982 to Boudewijn Paans, editor-in-chief of VPRO Gids (VPRO television guide). Paans is looking for graphic support for six editions of De Juinensche Courant, a satirical parody of a village newspaper, in which Kees van Kooten and Wim de Bie – two socially critical comedians – recruit members for the VPRO broadcasting organization with made-up news. Then, in 1985, Schreuders designs the VPRO magazine Vrije Geluiden (Free Sounds), again commissioned by Paans, to serve as a visual companion to the weekly five-minute radio program of the same name. Although only one issue of the magazine appears, Schreuders continues with the radio program until 1992. It is followed by the music program Instituut Schreuders (Schreuders Institute) in which ‘a weekly report is made of new “discoveries” in the field of light gramophone music’. For this he scours archives for all kinds of music, such as that of LeRoy Shield, Raymond Scott, and many others.

Satirical newspaper De Juinensche Courant, March 1983, to recruit members for the VPRO broadcasting organization. Editorial staff: Wim Noordhoek, Piet Schreuders, Kees van Kooten and Wim de Bie.

In 1985, Schreuders reconstructs some of Shield’s compositions, puts them on a cassette tape and hands it to musician Gert-Jan Blom. Blom uses this to write scores for his music group The Izzies and performs them in 1992. Video and record executive Theo van der Schaaf is in the audience and decides on the spot to publish the music. For this purpose, Blom founds the band The Beau Hunks, who will eventually complete three CDs, with booklets designed and liner notes written by Schreuders. He then goes on to work with the Dutch music label Basta on other record albums, featuring illustrations by Robert Crumb, Chris Ware, and Ever Meulen.

In 1998 Paans hires him again, now as one of the designers for the weekly VPRO Gids. He designs the editorial pages together with Sonja van Hamel – among others – with whom he also works for other clients. He designs sixty covers for the television guide and invites others to design the rest. And in collaboration with Beate Wegloop, in 2011 Schreuders compiles the book VPRO gids covers, which contains all the covers of the guide from 1926 to the present. 

Record sleeve as a paperback cover with a 1955 painting by James Avati. The Boulevard of Broken Dreams was an orchestra led by Gert-Jan Blom, which performed at the festival of the same name (predecessor of the current De Parade festival). Released by Idiot Records, 1985.

Favorite topics
In the years that follow, Schreuders writes and designs more books. For example, Voor verbetering vatbaar (Room for improvement) from 2022, in which he, as ‘De Spatiepolitie’ (The Kerning Police), not only inspects facades for typographical inaccuracies but also offers solutions on how to improve them. Then there’s Het Grote Boek van De Poezenkrant (The Big Book of The Cats’ Newspaper), which collects all of the issues of De Poezenkrant up to 2004, with a ‘real’ cat’s tail as a bookmark. In 1992, The Beatles’ London: A guide to 467 Beatles sites is published (revised in 2008), a collaboration with Mark Lewisohn and Adam Smith, for which Schreuders also draws a set of maps and graphics. In 2016, together with Luuk Smeets and René Windig, Mark Smeets: De triomf van het tekenen (Mark Smeets: The triumph of drawing) appears, which serves as an overview of the late artist’s complete oeuvre. In 2023, Het universum van Willem Frederik Hermans (The universe of Willem Frederik Hermans), in which Schreuders, Max Pam, and Hans Renders present all kinds of previously unpublished letters, documents, and photos by this writer. 

Still to be published are a book about the Hilversum font ‘Pootjesglas’ and one about the Dutch writer T.M.F. Steen (1927–1969). Schreuders admires Steen for his thorough and meticulous research into all kinds of details in light music, old films, and American comics. Steen’s themes largely overlap with many of his own favorite subjects, which are partly given to him by what he saw, read, and heard in his youth. 

His work on articles on these topics can be roughly divided into three parts. First of all, the research itself, which Schreuders estimates occupies approximately 75 percent of his work time. This is followed by a second phase in which the research results are described, and maps and diagrams are drawn, which occupies a further twenty percent. Finally, the remaining five percent is spent on the layout.

Piet’s approach
Schreuders’ design is neither nostalgic nor inspired by the tropes of pastiche, persiflage, or parody, which imitate to confuse the audience or to mock the subject; Schreuders does not intend any of this. For the right visual tone of his designs, he looks to the past and at the world around him, together the largest graphic archive available: “I do not believe in concealing sources, on the contrary, they can be easily seen, and that’s also the intention, because I want the references to the particular atmosphere that I’m aiming for to be clear. In typography I’m primarily concerned with the associative atmosphere that a certain graphic element evokes and that atmosphere arises from the context in which we perceive those elements.” And when those graphic elements merge with the context, it reinforces the message of the subject: “Especially when designer and author work closely together or are even united in one person. Content and form can then no longer be separated and reinforce each other.” In other words: the fusion of content and form creates an editorial symbiosis such that the graphic design will never be a thin decorative layer. For that reason, Schreuders does not exclude any graphic style, making his work chameleonic and powerful at the same time.

Because what you hear or read is only really convincing when you see it with your own eyes. That is why Schreuders, like a director, chooses fonts that – as graphic actors – express the texts with their visual intonations that specifically refer to the particular subject at hand. After which he constructs a suitable typography for those fonts, the graphic mise-en-scene that makes the audience believe they are actually at the time and place where the content takes place. And because Schreuders’ subjects vary, his design varies, which means his publications do not look alike. In this way he constructs ‘his’ different universes to draw his readers into them.

Piet has been doing this since he was ten when he drew his very first personal ‘nonsense newspaper’.

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Piet Schreuders
born on 2 January 1951 in Rotterdam

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Author: Chris Vermaas, februari 2024
English translation and editing: Peter Hofstee
Final editing: Sybrand Zijlstra
Portrait photo: Aatjan Renders