MOVA LE DT
NUMBER 1
FEBRUARY 1998
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A
The Multi-dimensional Dutchman: An interview with Ron van der Meer Michael Dawson Ludlow, England
An elderly aunt of mine, to whom we paid regular courtesy visits during the war years, used to look upon my restless antics with a slightly jaundiced Fluous eye and declare that I had far too much Super became that something of a Energy, a malapropism me drained has alas of most of this family joke. Time but occasionally the phrase highly charged viscosity returns as being entirely appropriate to a few others I have had the pleasure of knowing. -
VOLUME 6
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Ron van der Meer is one such-a man who seems to have Super Fluidity in
abundance! Lanky, mercurial, somewhat
abrasive; he has the charm and raw Ron van der Meer
disingenuousness ofa perpetual schoolboy. Add to these
traits his much-flaunted Dutch origins and you have a quick-witted iconoclast who enjoys confronting problems head-on and solving them with wit and downto-earth practicality.
a stone's throw from the M4 motorway whose rumble is omnipresent in the distance. He greeted me with redstainedfingers: I'd caught him polishing his trade-mark red shoes! Pictures of this traditional Dutch footwear appear as his logo on note-paper and business cards; at book fairs and publishers' gatherings, the sight (and sound) of pointy red shoes approaching indicate that Van der Meer is near. I asked whether he is still able to buy them off the shelf in Holland: apparently he now has them specially made in batches of three. And I wondered if they were being given a final buff in honor of my presence but no. They were to be worn for a television session later in the day (an ITV crew were to film him for a schools' broadcast) and on a business trip immediately afterwards, first to the Netherlands (where, with his brother, he is forming a publishing company) and then on to America to clinch a few more deals. No wonder he chose headquarters so near the airport. -
We settled around the kitchen table with hard-
backed chairs (no executive fripperies here) armed with strong coffee and cheroots, and I began by asking how had his interest in book design especially pop-ups -
begun. I studied graphic design for four years at the Royal College of Fine Art in The Hague. That was during the
'60s. It was a very good course but strongly Bauhaus oriented. You know the sort of thing: your tutor got an orgasm if you put lettering at an angle against a primary colour background. We received an excellent training in basic graphic design and of course it's the sort of thing But you never lose. Highly philosophical! Very rarified! to 1 began in a way I found it increasingly restrictive to anxious hate it- so when I finished in 1969 I was very -
As a virtuoso children's book illustrator, designer and producer especially associated with a string of best-selling pop-ups and the internationally 13 successful fun-learning kits such as The art pack , The 15 he is maths pack", and the latest The brain pack bookone of Britain's most talented and versatile -
packaging entrepreneurs. When I arrived at his recently acquired home and studio-complex on the southwestern fringe of
London, the ground was trembling as if by his dynamic discharge: in fact, the secluded villa on a bosky rural lane is directly under the Heathrow flight-path and only
get away. I wanted to leave Holland and I wanted to get
into a different type of design altogether, one where I could apply the skills I'd acquired to other disciplines. I felt it was time to forget about graphic design; I didn't fancy spending my life devising corporate house-styles or
company logos. When I was accepted by the Royal College of Art in London it was like entering Valhalla. Continued on page 2