Hugo Puttaert: Think in Colour

Brussels-based graphic designer Hugo Puttaert is releasing Think in Colour, a vibrant coffee table book that covers his career from 1982 to 2014. Beyond being a breezy designer, he and his Visionandfactory are committed daredevils.

BOOK | Think in Colour ●●●
Hugo Puttaert/Visionandfactory MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 384 P., €45

The book’s shiny split-fountain print cover – multiple colours that blend into each other – is a foretaste of what follows inside. The first dozens of pages of this corpulent graphic monograph are shrouded in sober grey, white, and black. We see photos of flaking street walls in Berlin, a fragment of a destroyed building on the Muntplein/place de la Monnaie in Brussels, an upturned bathtub in a field, and a blindfolded man in a suit. We also see a book cover. The caption: “stop designing”.

It is only after the introduction by Rick Poynor – the book also contains notes by Steven Cleeren – that thinking in colour suddenly strikes on page 73. And how! Hugo Puttaert (1960), designer and skipper of the internationally renowned Visionandfactory (who is currently also a lecturer and editor-in-chief of Addmagazine) has a penchant for colour. Page 73: an explosion of bright yellow above the cut-off skyline of Brussels North, reflected horizontally in upside-down tree crowns. At the bottom of the page: “Explore Your Horizons”. This is Puttaert’s 2007 New Year’s poster for an accounting agency. The slogan summarises his philosophy: “Design is not about the product, it is about the act. […] Design should be about designing.”

Think in Colour itself is actually engaged in designing. The book anthologises 32 years of hard work and experiments at the same time. The colours inside the book evolve just like the colours on the cover. Page by page, the yellow morphs into orange, and then brown, bordeaux, bright red, pink, blue… Think in Colour does not transform harmoniously. The colours on one page run onto the next. They overlap, clash, and collide.
“Rules are good, break them” and “As soon as you learn, move on”: these are the mottos of Tibor Kalman and his iconoclastic M&Co. They adorn the walls of Puttaert’s studio. Also by Kalman and highly appropriate: “Good designers make trouble.” It is not merely the form of Puttaert’s electric signature that is highly charged. This work is committed, challenging, and boldly provocative. This agency makes a Christmas card – one with a withered tree and five lonely baubles. Puttaert plays with words and images from his own perspective. He places an immaculately dressed, winking man beside the slogan “Dump Your Hummer Now”.

Puttaert’s career is closely interwoven with the Brussels and Belgian art scene. This book also highlights unexecuted projects, such as for the Kunstenfestivaldesarts (which is unfortunately referred to as a “Biennial arts festival” in the book) or the Beursschouwburg. It takes balls to include them in a monograph.