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Rolf Harder

Posted by Scott









Work by Rolf Harder; this may be some of the most inspiring stuff I’ve seen in a while. More info from Harder’s bio at Roch and Harder:

Rolf Harder was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1929 and studied design at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts. In 1959 he moved to Montreal and established Rolf Harder Design. In 1965 he founded Design Collaborative—a graphic design and industrial company with offices in Toronto and Montreal—with Ernst Roch, Anthony Mann and Al Faux. Together they produced catalogues and booklets, trade marks and symbols, bearing “visual clarity and direct, effective communication”. The style of their design work “combines constructivism with a leaning to playful experiment”.

More of Harder’s work can be found at the MOMA archive. Interesting to see the progression of his work all the way up through the ’90s. It seems like right around end of the 1980’s the style of his work (at least what is represented at the MOMA site) sort of got watered down. No doubt a reaction to the times and the needs of the client. I wonder if, looking back, a designer like Harder would prefer any era of their work over another. I guess for me it’s obvious what I like most, but I wonder if Harder himself would say those Esprit covers, for instance, were better than his earlier work.

Rolf Harder via Matthew Lyons

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