Karel Martens is one of the most influential Dutch graphic designers. He was born in 1939 and studied at the art school in Arnhem, the city where he would later co-found the Werkplaats Typografie in 1998 with Wigger Bierma. He has always worked across design and teaching.
His work includes designing books, magazines, coins, postage stamps and telephone cards. For the Dutch PTT he designed stamps and phone cards that made everyday objects feel like small pieces of modernist design. Since 1990 he has worked on OASE, a Dutch architecture journal.
Alongside his commissions, Martens makes monoprints using found objects such as metal parts and old printing materials. These experiments with pattern, colour and overprinting feed back into his design work and have been collected in books like Printed Matter.
