Gert Dumbar, whose career presently spans more than 30 years, has consistently sought to raise the standard of graphic design and visual communications – at home in The Netherlands, as well as abroad. He believes graphic design derives its authority from the quality of thought that informs the deed rather than from the deed itself. Context is everything.
Dumbar was born in 1940 in Indonesia where he lived for several years before emigrating “home” to The Netherlands with his family. The resulting dichotomy of place – the lush, full-spectrumed tropics versus the more ascetic, monochromatic north – has, ever since, impacted how he sees and responds to the world. His design solutions embody the necessary dialectic between opposing forces: order/disorder, utility/ornament, conformity/rebellion, et cetera.
Gert Dumbar entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague with the ambition of becoming a painter; however, influenced by the late Paul Schuitema, whose efforts in the early 1920s helped establish graphic design as a full-fledged discipline, Dumbar soon abandoned painting for design. He concluded his studies in the post graduate graphic design program at the Royal College of Art in London.
In 1977 he founded Studio Dumbar, one of the most influential design studios in The Netherlands, thanks to his own efforts and those of long-time partners Michel de Boer and Kitty de Jong. A traveling exhibition entitled “Behind the Seen” highlights the studio’s achievements. The show has toured successively throughout the world since its conception in 1996. In 1999, recognizing the growing importance of the Pacific Rim, Studio Dumbar formed an alliance with Emery Vincent Design (Melbourne) and Wang Xu & Associates (Beijing).
Over the years Dumbar has held several academic appointments, including his most recent and ongoing appointment as staff member at the graphic design department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague and as visiting professor at the Royal College of Art in London; the University of Bandung, Indonesia; Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit, USA; DesignLabor in Bremerhaven, Germany, to name a few. He has served on a number of influential juries, together with, among others, I.M. Pei, Alessandro Mendini and A.R. Penck. He has received numerous honorary degrees, from, among other institutions, Humberside Polytechnic and the English Southampton Institute. He is a member of the Asociacion de Disenadores Grafáficos de Buenos Aires (ADG), the Alliance Graphique International (AGI), the British Designers and Art Directors Association (D&AD), and the Dutch Association of Graphic Designers (BNO). He is co-founder of the progressive Zeebelt Theater in The Hague, a podium for experimental multidisciplinary artistic expression.
Gert Dumbar is married and has two children, a daughter, a son and a grandson. In his free time, he divides his attention between restoring early 20th century French motorcycles and cultivating classic white English roses. Another dichotomy: the solidity of steel and the fragility of rose petals.
