Designmuseum Danmark on line
/Recently, major changes have been made to the on-line site for Designmuseum Danmark. Not only have pages and routes through the site been rethought but this is part of a much more extensive reassessment of the visual or brand image of the museum itself that has been undertaken by the Urgent Agency and Stupid Studio.
There is clear information on the site about opening times, exhibitions and news - as you would expect - but this is also the portal to the online catalogue for the museum collection so it is also a major research tool.
The extensive long-term exhibition of current Danish design from 2000 to 2015, under the title Dansk Design Nu, has a section on Danish typography, graphic design and book production. Type and graphic design has always been an important aspect of design in the country - for instance for corporate image for the Copenhagen Metro or for the newspaper Politiken and, of course, the national newspaper Berlingske has it’s own typeface.
And manufacturers of classic products and furniture, obviously associated with Denmark, do actually spend considerable time and thought on corporate logos, advertising, packaging and catalogues of the highest standard … even if customers discard the box with hardly a second thought, a study of the process of purchasing would surely find that exactly the same product presented in a shoddy or badly-designed box would not sell as well.
Denmark has a well established and, hopefully, a thriving book industry and not just for books on design.
For it’s own packaging, publications and products, Designmuseum Danmark has digitised the font ‘Flexibility’ that was developed in the 1960s by the architect and graphic designer Naur Klint (1920-1978).
On so many levels this is an inspired choice. Klint was the son of the architect and designer Kaare Klint and the grandson of Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint so he was, importantly, a member of one of the great families of Danish design but of course Kaare Klint was, as its main architect and designer, the creator of the Design Museum that the visitor sees now, as he was responsible for the work to convert the 18th-century hospital into a museum. He also taught design in the building when it was the home of the department of Interior and Furniture Design of the Academy of Fine Arts.
More important, perhaps, the typeface, with it’s relatively broad letters and generous spacing, is good over a broad range of sizes and line weights for digital on-screen use.
