Joost Grootens

Design philosophy is the foundation of several prominent designers and artists. This believe in their philosophy has led them to continuously contribute to the field. The field of design is defined by the desire to create something amazing, an interest in a set of problem to be solved by design or using design as a form of communication. Joost Grootens, a critically acclaimed designer who has won numerous prizes for his design among which are the 'Goldene Letter ' and two Gold Medals in the Best Book Design from all over the World competition in Leipzig and in 2009 he was awarded the Netherlands ' most prestigious design award, the Rotterdam Design Prize (http://www.grootens.nl/about/27.html). He is undoubtedly one of the most important book designer in the world.

Spending a year making the book Metaspaces (see figure A). This is a book that features the processes of reading the city through the use of illustrations, diagrams and words. This opens up possibility for Grootens to be involved in diagrammatic and information design. He then found out that what he wanted to pursue using multimedia could be done better in a book. Following that, Grootens received numerous photography, architectural, art and design books for him to create. All these allowed him to develop his own way of communicating this information that was presented by the authors. These happened between the publish of Metaspaces book in 1998 and one of his greatest creation, his first atlases. (Grafik, Issue 183, March 2010

This atlas contains such as maps, cultural history, poetry, regional events, dialects and also practical information. This wide variety of information made this atlas not only as a reference work but this also starts to properly reveal Grootens’ philosophy in book design (see figure C). However it was his second attempt on the atlas the Metropolitan World Atlas that got him thinking on the the method of displaying the content. A total of 101 metropolises were documented and analysed. This was done through a combination of same-scale ground plans and statistics. (Metropolitan World Atlas http://www.grootens.nl/2/10/11/3.html). Reducing any other unnecessary information and focuses on what is essential and important. The reason why Grootens started creating atlases was, he thought of including information and data in catalogues of artwork that nobody asked for. Grootens’ intention was to purely solve problems, to organise the content as such that the book was presented as clearly as possible. A designer should provide several access points to the information. Grootens be wary of how transparent he has to be in communicating his information and neutrality of the content (Grafik, Issue 183, March 2010