Background Information
Karel Martens is a Dutch designer and teacher, he has been teaching graphic design since 1977, he co-founded and still runs Werkplaats Typographie, which is a well respected Typography Masters course based in the Netherlands, he encourages his students to develop their own unique personality within design, absorbing experience from the outside world. He studied Art at the Arnham School of Art for five years, learning various disciplines. Although educating in fine art practices, Martins used his own influences to become a well respected Graphic Designer, he celebrated winning the Dr. A.H. Heineken prize for Art in 1996 by publishing a successful graphic design book - The Printed Matter.
Influences
Rather than follow trends or design movements, Martins takes his inspiration from the outside world, he finds numbers fascinating, describes the alphabet as a 'miracle' and see's colours as 'magic'. His collected ephemera cover's the walls of his studio and he takes great pleasure from the fundamental things about the world and how we make sense of it. the relationship between found objects is evident in his works, his passion for numbers, typography and colour provide the basis of many of his designs.
Interests
His interest in colour and found objects combine in many of his works, he layers colours by monoprinting using found objects as templates, building up into intricate designs usually resembling the alphabet or numbers. He uses simple shapes such as circles and squares to create other shapes and letterforms, showing his interesting visual. He mainly uses primary colours but by layering them creates multi depth unusual colours.
Karel Martens, Stamp Design, 1997
Karel Martens, Phone Card Design from the early 1990's
Karel Martens, Print (The Printed Matter)
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