Machine Graphics

Fueled by earlier teenage exploits into graffiti and comics, then traditionally schooled in graphic design at the Rietveld Academy, the Amsterdam-based design collective Machine has added a new chapter to innovative design originating from the Netherlands. Before dance music, live video projection, instant global reach and interactive means entered the mainstream, Klaverstijn and Du Bois-Reymond were amongst the first generation of designers to fully adopt and adapt to this different reality in their own recognizable way. From the start of their first collective called DEPT (1996-2001), Machine has consistently produced graphic designs for club flyers and posters, publications, record and CD covers and T-shirts – with projects for such clients as MTV; MARK Magazine; Kindred Spirits Records; Club Paradiso; Nike and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Through paste up posters, projections onto buildings, typography and design their work has graced galleries, record sleeves, clothing and sidestreets everywhere. Machine’s instantly-recognisable typefaces draw on retro LCD display and old school graffiti lettering while their graphic illustration adopts a blaze of shocking pinks and electric blues.

MV: Who is Machine and what is your history?

Machine: Machine is a two member collective from Amsterdam. We started under the name ‘DEPT’ in 1996, together with Leo van Munster. DEPT split up in 2001, and since then Mark Klaverstijn and Paul du Bois-Reymond are MACHINE.

MV: What is the core philosophy of your work?

Machine: We like to see each assignment, wether for clients or own initiatives as an opportunity to rethink things, invent new languages and ideas. we only do jobs we think are worth doing, projects that offer enough room to experiment, have fun.

MV: What influences and inspires you?

Machine: Everything around us: girls, movies, music, games, graffiti, parties, drugs, museums, cities, nature, bla bla bla. We’re often intrigued by the beauty of what others call ‘low culture’ meaning fast food packaging etc. etc.

MV: What are the challenges of providing visuals to music?

Machine: The nice thing is that music is often undefined visually: what does music look like? It’s an open and changing field where design can really play an important role. The challenge lies in getting atmospheres across to the listener that are often quite personal, multi-interpretable

MV: What do you like least about your field?

Machine: Copy cats and people who don’t do it for the love, or out of enthusiasm

MV:What sort of culture do you most identify with?

Machine: The one that loves your god too, the one that loves rather than exploits. The one that needs to be invented yet.

MV: Your style for Kindred Spirits is very organic. Is this a reaction against technology?

Machine: It was very much a reaction to what we saw going on in all those hip ‘flyer art part 678 ‘ type books. Everybody used the computer to achieve similar outputs: copies of copies of copies. Boring stuff in our opinion anyway. We started to do a sort of ‘perfect imperfection’: drawing the type made it ugly but at least uncopyable. We drew all the elements and put them together in the computer—spending hours on a computer trying to hide the computer in the actual design. Stupid maybe, but it somehow works.

MV: What are you working on now?

Machine: A new kindred release called ‘liquid spirits’, leader for a short indie film, new shirts for our machine shirt label, stuff like that

MV: How do you put your own politics or feelings into your work?

Machine: We always saw graphic design as a chance to add layers of info. Not every design is of course suitable for this, but we often include politics in our work. It is one thing we as artists can and have to do: give our opinion. if they lie to us, we can at least speak back, question issues, or make fun of their insanity.

MACHINE WEBSITE