The Blue Dot

Joost Grootens investigates new map making practices of technology companies and amateurs. As a graphic designer Grootens researches the blurring maker-user divide in the production of visual information.

Joost Grootens (1971, NL) is a graphic designer, educator, and researcher. Based in Amsterdam and Biel/Bienne (CH), his studio SJG designs books, maps, typefaces, spatial installations and digital information environments for publishers like Lars Müller Publishers, nai010 publishers, Phaidon press, educational and research institutes like ETH Zürich, Future Cities Laboratory Singapore, TU Munich, and museums like Astrup Fearnly Museet Oslo, Serpentine Galleries London, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven. SJG won numerous prizes for their designs. Among them the Golden Letter and two gold medals in the Best Book Design from all over the World competition, and twice the Dutch Design Award for Graphic Design. A monograph about SJG’s work titled I swear I use no art at all was published by 010 Publishers in 2010.

Grootens was recently appointed Professor of Artistic Research in Visual Design at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. He is a university lecturer at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts of Leiden University, head of the Master programme Information Design at Design Academy Eindhoven, and tutor at the Master Editorial Design of the Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche, Urbino.

Grootens studied architectural design at Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam and obtained his doctorate at Leiden University. A public edition of his dissertation 'Blind Maps and Blue Dots: The Blurring of the Producer-User Divide in the Production of Visual Information' was published by Lars Müller Publishers in 2021. Grootens’ research addresses the transformation of the fields and practices of graphic design and mapmaking resulting from technological changes in tools to record, create, edit, produce and disseminate visual information.

www.grootens.nl