Richard Niessen (1972) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1996. As a graphic designer, he is known for its colorful posters and expressive typography, its innovative identities and his collaborations with other artists.
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam wrote: “The Niessen universe is multicoloured, systematic, exuberant, organic and consistent. But then it ascertains that everything is intertwined. His designs look like an ode to jewelery. But what piece of jewelry? Ornaments derived from lead type. Cut ones, pasted ones and digital ones. Everything is possible: it is the democracy of the shapes that has been implemented up to its ultimate consequences.
In 2007 he created ‘TM-City’, a travelling exhibition for the Festival International du Graphisme in Chaumont, France. In 2014, he extended this review with a book/exhibition ‘A Hermetic Compendium of Typographic Masonry’, a portfolio of 26 richly layered screen prints for ‘Une Saison Graphique’ in Le Havre. Currently, he is working on The Palace for Typographic Masonry, an (imaginary) architectural structure meant to organize and share his sources.
