NORMALIEENBOEKJE
Piet Zwart
[Piet Zwart]: NORMALIEENBOEKJE [Normalization Booklet]. Nuth, NL: Drukkerij Rosbeek BV, 1986. First edition [limited to 2,000 copies]. Text in Dutch. Facsimile edition of Piet Zwart’s Normalieenboekje for N.V. Nederlansche Kabelfabriek Delft originally published in 1924. Thick printed wrappers. 88 [viii] pp. Color reproductions followed by 8 pages of artist statements. Trace of wear to wrappers, but a nearly fine copy.
7.75 x 7.75 softcover edition with 96 pages of reproductions from Piet Zwart’s Normalieenboekje [Normalization Booklet] for N.V. Nederlansche Kabelfabriek Delft. The oversized trim size of the facsimile limited edition allows for a full impression of the original 11.4 cm x 19.25 cm. tabbed pages.
Piet Zwart (1885 –1972) worked in many spheres, including graphic design, architecture, furniture and industrial design, painting, writing, photography, and design education. His association with the Avant-Garde and his acquaintance with artists such as Kurt Schwitters, Theo Van Doesburg, Vilmos Huszar, and El Lissitsky all helped to crystallize his own convictions and aesthetic visions.
In 1923 Zwart began an extraordinary client-designer relationship with the Nederlandsche Kabel Fabrick (Dutch Cable Factory). For the next ten years, he produced no less than 275 advertisements for the NKF. These typographic advertisements constitute Zwart’s major contribution to Dutch typography and form.
The NKF assignment can be divided into four segments: the magazine advertisements (1923-1933); Het Normalieenboekje (Normalization Booklet) (1924-25); the 64-page catalog published in Dutch and English (1928-29); and the information booklet Delft Kabels (1933). Het Normalieenbockje, one of Zwart’s least known works, represents a turning point in his typography. One major difference is the use of an additional contrast, color, which was absent in the advertisements. However, color was included not as a decorative element, but more as a graphic cue.
Like most others during this period, Zwart was self-taught in typography, and although he had been designing printed pieces since the end of 1921, acquiring the Nederlandsche Kable Fabriek as his main client made him realize just how little he actually knew about printing technology:
"The first design that I made for the NKF was hand drawn. I was still not finished with it when the publication had already come out. At that time I realized that this was not a very good way to work and then plunged headfirst into typography. The nice thing about all of this was that I actually learned about it from an assistant in the small printing company where the monthly magazine in electro-technology was being produced.
". . . After going through the bitter experience of that piece being too late, I made more sketches and then played typographic games with the assistant in the afternoon hours, how we could make this and that . . .
"Actually, that's how I came to understand the typographic profession, I didn't know the terms, I didn't know the methods, I didn't even know the difference between capitals and lower case letters."
Zwart referred to himself as typotekt, a combination of the words typographer and architect. To a large extent this term did indeed express Zwart’s conception of his profession — the architect building with stone, wood, and metal; the graphic designer building with typographic material and other visual elements. Le Corbusier defined a house as a machine for living, and in the same sense Zwart’s typography could be called a "machine for reading."