Richard Niessen (b. 1972, Volendam, NL) works since graduation in 1996 on a body of work that he calls ‘Typographic Masonry’, which in other words is a bold craft of forging a mix of signs, symbols, and ornaments to recreate nonlinear structures. This process is what mainly characterizes his style, with a predilection for print work.
He is currently working on the Palace of Typographic Masonry. In the latest installation of The Palace of Typographic Masonry, designer Richard Niessen deepens the rich variety of spoken and written languages. He describes the project as “an institute dedicated to the richness and variety of the world’s graphic languages.”
Niessen does not conceive the Palace of Typographic Masonry as a physical building but as a metaphor which holds all his design values, sources and inspirations. To him it’s a mental space which helps people to store mental data by locating information into different rooms and spaces. Although the Palace is non-physical he still fantasizes on how the actual structure would be like. As he says: “ (…) it consists of nine departments: Sign, Symbol & Ornament; Construction, Poetics & Play; and Dialogue, Craft & Order. Within these departments, you can find spaces like the Building Set Storage, The Gate of Cyphers and Codes, The Gridded Section, and Tracing Board Treasury.”
Besides this, Richard also works for a variety of clients, exhibition spaces, and museums. His artistic method is definitely definable as experimental and collaborative, as this what how acts at all times.
He then shares a studio space with Esther de Vries since 2007 and is a member of AGI since 2014. Together with Esther, they are Niessen & de Vries, which work is described as “lyrical design”, as they seemingly use a rich language which appeals to senses and the intellect.
To know more about him, go here.
