Drawing for Furore #12.
Herwolt van Doornen is an Amsterdam-based graphic artist, illustrator, designer and photographer. His work has appeared in both mainstream media (Het Parool, VPRO-Gids, Vrij Nederland) and more independent publications (De Poezenkrant, Furore, De God van Nederland). His drawings were also published by The New Yorker magazine. He drew one gag comic, 'Familie Wittewas' (1992) for VPRO Magazine. Since the late 1970s, Van Doornen is one of the notable artists closely associated with the Amsterdam comics shop Lambiek. His most significant contribution was picking out the image still in use on our official logo.
Early life
Herman Wolter van Doornen was born in 1959 in Amsterdam. He started his drawing and design career in the suburbs of Amsterdam West. In 1976, he chose to explore the comic scene and got his first work published in Inkt, a fanzine about comic art with then Lambiek co-worker Flip Fermin as inspirational editor. In the following years, Lambiek's Kees Kousemaker (officially trained as an art teacher) enjoyed being the sharpest critic of every new drawing that left Herwolt's drawing board. In addition, Van Doornen helped Kees out with several odd jobs for Lambiek, including contributing to the Lambiek Bulletin (1977-1979). Together with Job Goedhart, he was also the mastermind behind Lambiek's iconic ZIP street sign and logo. Herwolt picked the now famous image from the 'Suske en Wiske' album 'Prinses Zagemeel' (as can be seen on the top left of this page), after which Job Goedhart turned the eventual design into the format of a 'Suske and Wiske' book cover, while Onno Docters van Leeuwen meticulously styled the composition into the sharp icon as we know it. As a true eyecatcher, the logo adorns the Lambiek shop facade since 1980, as well as its ubiquitous shopping bags.
'Familie Wittewas Op Vakantie!'.
After working for a year at Har van Fulpen's comic publishing company Drukwerk (then a meeting point of Tante Leny artists like Peter Pontiac and Aart Clerkx), Van Doornen enrolled at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, from which he graduated in 1983 as a graphic designer specialized in the language of symbols. He started to design book covers and logos and worked as a freelancer for the Mijksenaar wayfinding experts studio.
Spot illustrations courtesy of The New Yorker magazine.
Comics
In 1992, Van Doornen presented a comic strip starring a family of ghosts, called 'De Familie Wittewas' on the back page of the VPRO-gids. In 1993, he entered The New Yorker magazine with a wide selection of small format black and white drawings, published through the years as so-called "spot illustrations". His work can also be found in issues of Vrij Nederland (2006-2007), newspaper Het Parool, the VPRO-gids, the Piet Schreuders magazines Furore and De Poezenkrant, the satirical quarterly De God van Nederland (2013-2016) and the 365 Pictures Book 'The Cat-A-Day Tales' (Rubinstein, 2005) with text by Aletta Schreuders (wife of Piet Schreuders).
Images from 'The Cat-A-Day Tales'.
Association with Lambiek
Throughout the years, Van Doornen remained associated with the Amsterdam comics store Lambiek. In 1988, Van Doornen designed promotional stickers for our store. They were deliberately put on the iconic striped steel traffic bollards in Amsterdam (the so-called "Amsterdammertjes") to help strollers find their way to Kerkstraat 78. Twenty years later, Van Doornen drew Lambiek's mascot Lambik as a knight on horseback to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the store. The image was used for the commemorative book, '40 Jaar Lambiek' (2008), which celebrated 40 years of Lambiek. In 2018, Van Doornen assisted Lambiek's store owner Boris Kousemaker, Comiclopedia editor Bas Schuddeboom and graphic designer Cyril Koopmeiners in compiling the book '50 Jaar Lambiek' (Les Éditions Lambiek, 2018), which collects half a century's worth of drawings made for and about the store. The text was translated into English by fellow Comiclopedia editor Kjell Knudde.
Tribute drawing for Lambiek's 25th anniversary (1993) and the cover for 40th anniversary book (2008).
Stadsboekwinkel Amsterdam
Since 2007, Van Doornen has been the manager of the Stadsboekwinkel Amsterdam, located in the monumental De Bazel building, which houses the municipal archives of Amsterdam on the Vijzelstraat. With the history and beauty of Amsterdam being his everyday working environment, Van Doornen nowadays especially likes making outdoors drawings and brush paintings along the Amsterdam canals and in Artis Zoo, which are presented along with his prodigious stream of street photography via Facebook and Instagram (#herwolt). A selection of his pictures from the period 2012-2016 was published in the booklet 'Her en Der - Amsterdamse Ogenblikken' by Piet Schreuders in 2016.
At the occasion of Herwolt's 50th birthday, a small exhibition was held in Gallery Lambiek from 1 to 8 February 2009.