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About Architype Motherwell
In 1966, Wim Crouwel designed the exhibition poster and catalogue for the American artist, Robert Motherwell, held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Crouwel captured the essence of Motherwell’s art by creating an iconic poster, that is powerful, emotional and memorable.
Crouwel’s typographical interpretation for the ‘Motherwell’ poster was a harmonious blend of simplicity and complexity. He used a limited colour palette, opting for dark grey and black that mirrored the energy and depth of Motherwell’s painting. As with all of Crouwel’s type design, featuring his signature ‘grid’ style, it is meticulously clean and geometric. The poster displays the word ‘Motherwell’, which sits at the very bottom of the poster, mirroring a cropped section of Robert Motherwell’s ‘Elegy to the Spanish Republic’ painting above. It evokes the bold and heavy nature of Motherwell’s painting style. Crouwel’s lettering, almost gothic-like in components and construction, is a powerful interpretation of Motherwell’s paintings, creating a cohesive and visually striking design.
The ‘Motherwell’ lettering is the inspiration for our latest release, Architype Motherwell. Implementing Crouwel’s narrowly devised grid system for the Architype Motherwell font family was challenging and complex. We incorporated a higher ascender height to allow for the diacritics to sit appropriately and the cut ins to the joining ‘m and r’ strokes were difficult to adapt to the lighter styles, from the original. We wanted a standard stencil gap thickness throughout the family, this allows the design to have a smooth transition across the range. The positioning of the stencil gaps is diverse and playful, offering an interesting texture.
Robert Motherwell, (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991), was an American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker, and editor of The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology. Motherwell was one of the youngest of the New York School, which also included Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.
Architype Motherwell is a powerful, robust, display stencil design, now available in 5 weights: Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Heavy. The font includes alternative lowercase glyphs, positive and negative circled figures, a Bitcoin symbol, arrows, and extended ligatures including a ‘www’ ligature.
Wim Crouwel’s poster for the Stedelijk Museum’s Robert Motherwell exhibition, 1966.
The ‘Motherwell’ poster lettering by Wim Crouwel, 1966.
The lowercase ‘e’ design progression, Wim’s original, overlay design, Architype Motherwell final form.
Architype Motherwell Cap ‘M’, Master Compatibility in production.
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