-Is a designer based in Antwerp. Well known for his work on the ‘Rock Werchter Festival’.
-Is a prolific designer who designs anything from CD sleeves and posters to bags and sometimes, interior concepts.
His handlettering style is not a fixed, overused tool throughout his work, rather a potent weapon he employs when a particular voice is needed for a project.
It is often countered by his clean, hard edged graphics, making him a key designer to look at; he has a variety of skill sets and is more than capable of using computerised type and image making illustrative methods, but often chooses to bring a different angle to a project by using handlettering.
In his book cover for ‘De Gevefde Vogel’ (The Painted Bird), he integrates what appears to be either letterpress, or carefully hand drawn type, with brush script handlettering. This gives a real focus to the white brush script against the black background with the blood red bird shape behind.
By using this colour scheme and composition we are drawn to assuming that this book is perhaps a murder mystery; with the white brush script looking like both police chalk markings at a crime scene, or a note of confession.
Each of the elements though disparate and varied in media, work together in harmonious composition to produce a striking cover, made human and accessible by the handlettering.
In a poster for client Walpurgis, Hautekiet blends handlettering with other media; straight Gil Sans and (possibly illustrator drawn) texture, and photography. The handlettering reads ‘Waar is thuis en Hoe Komikdaar”, which, loosely translated, is “Where home is, and how I come to be there.”
Here, though the title of the piece, this handlettering seems intentionally difficult to read, as it is scrawled, scratched and blurred.
This, unlike ‘The Painted Bird’, where the lettering is clear and dominant, makes the title more of a background texture. It is certainly a subheading to the Gil Sans set ‘Walpurgis & De Roovers”.
Again though, where the handlettering of ‘The Painted Bird’ alluded to both note of confession and/or police markings, here Hautekiet tailors his letterforms to look like a note of a diary; quickly scrawled and perhaps, not meant to be read.
Hautekiet is, as he should be, setting the correct tone for the posters, and has identified that handlettering in these styles was appropriate for the respective posters, adding another dimension to the artwork.
In contrast to these two posters, where Hautekiet blends mixed media in collage, he allows his hand lettering to stand alone in his poster for “Leonce en Lena”. It is countered only by a photograph of a still/swatted fly in the top right corner of the poster, blended to appear as if the poster is a surface that the fly has landed on. The intention here is humour; spelt out by the haphazard graphite scrawl Hautekiet has used. By setting the lettering in this way, Hautekiet adds an intentionally playful and knowingly sarcastic tone.
Hautekiet’s range of methods for creating type and lettering are vast, and whilst he often will integrate hand rendered letterforms into his work, each piece of work he produced is a progression or departure from the last.
His simulation of block sans serif capital letterforms in a poster for Sam Shepard’s “True West” is definitely a movement away from the intentionally artless scrawl of “Leonce en Lena”.
Whilst retaining the quirk and energy of his other hand lettering, here Hautekiet pays homage to 1930s’ posters. He also shows competent skills for ordering his information. The lettering is again seamlessly blended with the rest of the work; the ‘cut out’ look to the lettering fits with the stencilled nature of the poster as a whole.
This, much like a LauTrec poster, forces the type not only to be part of the image, but to take the focal point of the illustration.
Despite having decided that the promotional material for the company ‘De Roovers’ should usually be set with some form of hand lettering, there is no overt repetition in the style of hand lettering Hautekiet uses. The ‘scratched on’ appearance of the lettering for a poster titled ‘The Woods’ stands against the background photograph with powerful results; it retains all the energy and immediacy a scratch should.
“A scratch is the purest of marks: direct, immediate and unaffected. Skill is unnecessary and artistry is unimportant; it is vernacular’s vernacular”
This scratchy writing perfectly conveys a sense of ‘back to basics’ and raw power that links perfectly to the nature-filled imagery that the title, ‘The Woods’ suggests.
The message that Hautekiet is sending to the viewer via his type raises its own set of questions and codes to decipher. “Whereas pure type requires the right words to telegraph meaning, a scratch (large or small) invariably draws the reader to it to decipher the meaning.”
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