Die Gestalten Verlag

26 Sep 2005 Category: Features, Graphics, Products, Recommended, Top Page 10, Worldwide

If you are interested in Graphic Design, knowing Die Gestalten Verlag is a must. Check your precious design books for the publisher’s name and you will probably find that you have quite a few of their books already. (If not, you certainly missed out on the real inspiration.) Die Gestalten Verlag (DGV) are more than just book publishers, they are in fact the design world’s curator, giving opportunities to visual artists to showcase their work and making sure, it gets noticed - worldwide. Famous for their high quality in the works they select, you will find graphic design icons next to the up and coming underground artist, yet to be discovered. “It’s the work, that counts.”

PingMag spoke to Robert Klanten, the man who looks over every single page, deciding what’s hot and what is not.

Interview by Uleshka

Robert, what is your main part inside Die Gestalten?

Everything… from establishing the company in the first place and all that needed to be done from the beginning: supervision, marketing, creation, managing everyone involved in DGV… to selecting the artists and deciding which titles are being published in the end. I spend about 50% of my time editing the books on a creative basis and another 50% are devoted to running the company.

There are two sides to DGV: the design studio where Andreas Peyrel and Markus Hollmann-Loges run an independent company doing design work for regular clients and the publication part, where you and your team create books and distribute all sorts of other design-products. How many people are actually working for the DGV publication part?

We are a group of about 18 people, including freelancers, but “freelancer” is a very wide term for us. Most freelancers are here most of their time and some have been with us for 6-7 years. Why we still call them freelancers is because they do their own design work on the side, have their own studio here and their own clients. Working about 2-3 days a week for DGV and still having time to do their designs seems to be a healthy balance. It keeps their creativity, enables them to achieve their own merits and keeps them fresh. I find it very important to have real designers working as editors for design books, because they know what they are talking about. If one of the editors goes out to interview an illustrator for example, they speak the same language.

How do you see DGV’s role in the design world?

We are known as a respectable publishing company, but the reason why we can achieve what we do is because we see ourselves differently. DGV is actually supervising a network of creative activity. We notice what is going on, pick up talents and present them. We are influencing the design world, by the way we are put up some projects. We are in this mediate position, where we are able to give certain things a shape, materialize and showcase artwork to then feed it back to other visual artists.

This is an opportunity for the people we are working with. We are able to give them a start, some connection to the creative industry. Companies don’t just buy our books for inspiration but often to find an artist, who is skilled to do what they are looking for. There have even been instances where relatively unknown designers have been commissioned by big name clients, because of their participation in the books.

How do you choose your artists? What kind of work has enough potential to be turned into a book?

There are two kinds of books: monographs and compilations. Of course it is easier to get into a compilation, especially if you are a rather young designer and don’t yet have a huge range of styles. It is more work to do compilations for us, but people usually prefer to buy a book, that features many different artists and different styles in terms of inspiration in a particular field (like logo design for example). People have become more work focused and often see books as a tool for them.

We don’t do so many monographs these days anymore - nobody does. It is hard do find people, who have enough range and qualitiy in their artwork to fill a whole book with them. You need a recognizable style, which is both contemporary and sophisticated.

You still seem to find enough good people to fill whole books, though. I am very impressed by the art works of WK Interact, or Boris Hoppek’s small Sancho Panza book and what about Eike’s Grafischer Hort? That is an impressive, big and important archive you managed to put together.

Yes, I agree, but people like Eike don’t come out of nowhere. I know him since ‘94 and I have been watching his works for a long time. People like him are rare, though, but he is a very good example for what it takes: he always had a very open mind and has influences from various disciplines. His team consists of very different individuals, different talents and at the same time, they manage to give Eikes Grafischer Hort a definite face. They have always been on the cutting edge of contemporary creation, which is quite a different story to what many other graphic designers are doing: trying to go with one style for as long as they can.

You have a lot of new titles coming up in the next weeks. Hidden Track will certainly be an interesting compilation about space design, or Immune, the second book by Floria Sigismondi, whose first book Redemption became a bible for gothic girls here in Japan. Which ones are you trying to push most?

Talking about titles is like talking about children: you can’t say which one your favorite is. Each single one is interesting and important for its very own reason.

We put most of our time into creating titles that often have a very different fan base: some are more agency related, others trendy, about life style or of general interest. All these books are worth publishing.

If I ask people which DGV books they have, they all come with a different selection. Many buy books they couldn’t find anywhere else. Books that simply hadn’t been done before, or ones that feature unusual designers.

This is often the stuff that makes all the difference. You can’t just look at the big titles that sell well like Los Logos, Type One or Pictoplasma which can be found in pretty much all creative agencies.

Our credibility comes from taking the risk to do it anyway. There is failure here and there, but that is the part of trying.

What are your main experiences after 9 years of DGV? What has changed in the design world?

The most important change is certainly internet and email. That is a great achievement and it helps us being fast in what we are doing.

Design work is also more respected now than it used to be. Years ago, companies would take some pages out of our books, pretty much copy them and we couldn’t do anything about it. Now, they feel that there is a certain ethic behing it and call up the artist to work for them.

This has a big effect for designers, enables them to freelance more and gives them the opportunity do develop different styles in different fields. An illustrator can also work as a typographer, photographer and street artist - all in one person.

That is very interesting. Before you could easily tell the difference between an amateur and a professional but now that equipment got so affordable, you can do a music video for cheap if you have the right idea. Therefor, a good idea is more important then ever.

How long- on average- does it take, to publish a book?

That varies widely: sometimes it takes us almost a year to work on a title, sometimes just a coulpe of weeks. We publish about 20-25 books a year.

The fastest was the “Designed To Help” -charity book for the Tsunami crisis. That was world record speed! From getting to know the project until its final production took only 6 weeks. That was an incredible achievement, also for the people we have been collaborating with.

That was pretty much the most important of all our projects, because we have been donating more than 20 000 Euros to the Asian tsunami fund and this project is ongoing!

Your books are not only known for great content, but also for a very high quality of printing, the frequent use of 5th colors, embossing in covers, stencils … the cover of the “Mushroom Girls Virus” by Deanne Cheuk (beautiful illustrations by the art director of Tokion magazine) is STITCHED!!!

Even your catalogue is beautifully designed, embossed and has a lavishly pearly gloss paint which make it a desirable object to keep. This is only your catalogue! How much do you spend for those extras?

That always depends on how many books we are printing, the retail costs…. We look at every title individually and ask ourselves, if a little extra would give it the right twist or not. Still, the content decides the form and you have to adjust it for that. Making a fancy cover around something, that is pretty much like anything else, in order to make it stand out, would not be our strategy, but when it comes to business cards or our catalogue, we find it important to show to our retailers, what we can do, and they appreciate it.

Volkswagen asked you to select artists and do the art direction for their Hotel Fox in Copenhagen. This project was a big success, a real breakthrough which took space design, illustration and street art to a whole different level - a great opportunity for the artists and DGV. Can we expect more of those projects of you in the future?

I am creating analog experiences and those do not have to be limited to a book. We are and active part of the design world, so we might as well expand that towards different disciplines. With Hotel Fox, we basically only showed what we can do.

It was very similar to publishing another book in a way, but the challenge lay in the different medium. I can imagine to do more projects like these, but that doesn’t change what we are mainly doing: expanding, strengthening, exploring and using our network together with our global designers.

Thank you very much, Mr. Klanten.

34 Comments

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