Gerrit Noordzij Prize 2012

Awards / Communication design

Karel Martens to receive the Gerrit Noordzij prijs 2012.

By Editor Design.nl /asdf 11-01-2012

The Gerrit Noordzij Prize this year goes to typographical designer Karel Martens. He will be awarded the prize on Friday 9 March 2012 at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts (KABK) by the 2009 laureate Wim Crouwel. Following the award ceremony on 9 March, the exhibition about Wim Crouwel’s work will be opened.

Surprised and excited is Karel Martens (Mook en Middelaar, 1939) with the Gerrit Noordzij Prize. Martens receives the prize - named after letter designer Gerrit Noordzij - thanks to his achievements in typography, teaching and publishing. He designed many books and created covers for SUN - Socialist Publishing Nijmegen - stamps, coin designs, lettering on buildings and telephone cards as well as typographical printing experiments. In addition, he has been active as a lecturer since 1977, first at the ArtEZ academy in Arnhem, then at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. He founded the WT - Workshop Typography - a Master’s typography course in Arnhem. In 2009 Karel Martens became guest lecturer at the Yale University School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut for the prestigious Graphic Design course. Martens has been rewarded repeatedly for his work, among others with the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for the Arts in 1996.
 
Gerrit Noordzij Prize

The Gerrit Noordzij Prize is an initiative by the Master’s course Type and Media at the KABK and is organized in collaboration with Museum Meermanno | Huis van het boek in The Hague and under the auspices of the Dr. P.A. Tiele-Foundation. The prize is awarded once every three years by an expert jury. The jury this year were: Jack Verduyn Lunel (Chairman) director of the KABK, Gerard Unger, professor of Typography at the University of Leiden, Petr van Blokland, letter designer and lecturer at the Type and Media course and Ada Lopes Cardozo, head of Graphic Design at the KABK (secretary). The award ceremony and exhibition in 2012 are sponsored by the Jurriaanse Stichting, The Hague city council and the Dr. Hendrik Muller Vaderlandsch Fonds.   The Gerrit Noordzij Prize has been awarded to Gerrit Noordzij, Fred Smeijers, Erik Spiekermann, Tobias Frère-Jones and Wim Crouwel.