Devoted designers prove that success is all in the details later designers have learned of his designs, as it is available in a wide range of products from street signs, billboards and cutlery. The award is one of the few Danish scholarships named after a particular designer and is only rewarded to a designer. As a scholarship from one of a deceased Danish design pioneers, there is a special aura about it. The distributed portion has been very modest. The Memorial scholarship was founded in 1932 in memory of the pioneering and versatile designer Engelhardt, and except for a few years, the Memorial scholarship has 1933 annually awarded a designer since 1933 that has proven to possess special shaping skills, preferably in the areas that constituted the core of Engelhardt’s work: street furniture, design for home, tool, book printing, font design and textiles. 2 In 1923, Engelhardt began his work for the municipality of Gentofte. His work led to the beautiful, enamel signs with white letters on a black background and the iconic heart of the ‘‘j’’ in “road.” 3 Along the way, there has been a gradual changes to both the graphic design and the enamel signs themselves. However, Englehardt’s iconic use of high contrast and raised letters can be seen on most Danish house number plates throughout the country.
n recent years, Mads Quistgaard has solved innovative and bold typographic tasks ranging from the Danish banknote to sophisticated clock hands for Banedanmark. And the special project of developing type design for the new banknote is said to be an identity challenge with national character. Quistgaard received the prized Knud V. Engelhardt Memorial Award in February 2011. At the time he was the CEO of Pleks, a creative firm. The choice of Quistgaard as this year’s scholarship recipient was motivated on behalf of the board of trustees and graphic designer Bo Linnemann. Linnemann is also the creative director at Kontrapunkt, a Danish firm that takes on a massive amount of global clients. They are best known for their creative campaigns that incorporate their own type faces. After Quistgaard received the award, he was hired as Senior Partner & Design Director at Linnemann’s firm. Engelhardt was Denmark’s first in the modern sense of a functionalist architect. As he was based in Thorvald, he created the opportunity for a Danish tradition paired with a rational Danish idiom of democratic, industrialized mass production. His early death stopped his immediate influence on posterity, but many
MADS QUISTGAARD Senior Partner & Design Director, Kontrapunkt FAVORITE DESIG N It’s amazing the way that smartphones are helping to facilitate change in how we communicate 1
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Mads Quistgaard was awarded the Knud V. Engelhardt Memorial Scholarship for his tireless work to raise awareness of and respect for Danish typographic design...
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BO LINNEMANN,
CREATIVE DIRECTOR, KONTRAPUNKT