Van Toorn VS. Crouwel Debate - Objectivity vs. Subjectivity

Crouwel and Van Toorn, two well-known graphic designers held a debate over subjectivity and objectivity within graphic design. The discussion covers the social and professional role of the designer; the value of grids and typographic tradition; and the function of the graphic designer when designing for museums and art galleries, a very normally objective orientated brief.

Crouwel’s position within the debate is that graphic design should be solely objective, due to the nature of design he believes ‘As a designer I must never stand between the message and its recipient.’ Van Toorn disagrees with these views, in his opinion ‘A designer can adopt [...] the position of neutral intermediary. The acts you perform take place through you, and you are a subjective link. But you deny this subjectivity, meaning you view your occupation as purely neautral one.’

Throughout the debate each of the designers are respectful of each other’s opinions and views on graphic design and the way in which each have a very different opinion, giving a very agree to disagree view on the debate. Although at one point Van Toorn makes his opinion very clear, not only on clean cut purpose design, but Crouwel’s design style itself… ‘You impose your design on others and level everything. You were at the forefront, and now our country is inundated by waves of trademarks and house styles and everything looks the same. […] To me, your approach is not relevant, and in my view you should not propagate it as the only possible solution for a number of communication problems, because it’s not true. What your approach does is basically confirm existing patterns. This is not serving communication – it is conditioning human behaviour.’ This argument basically deems Crouwel’s design as irrelevant to the world of design and lacking progression, which design needs to stay new and move on.

As a debate which happened some decades ago opinions on graphic design have changed, the idea of all graphic designers needing to adopt one style is now redundant. Graphic design today is considered as pluralist, it must be accepted by designers that there is many ways of doing graphic design, non being wrong, all approaches can be deemed as valid processes. Some of the content of the debate could be said to not represent the intelligence and professionalism of the two designers, but it does clearly show a passion for the clash of opinions. It is interesting to see, in the current world of design, the difference between the two opinions and how it is still relevant; yet not spoken about in the scale of what can be found in the debate. Is there still a difference between objectivity and subjectivity in design? Or is there a need to differentiate between the two depending on the needs of the brief, or, in the case of the debate, the opinion of the designer.

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