Linking Arms

T-shirts with slogans are out. And new media – that’s over by now too. In fact, according to Niels Meulman, alias Shoe, trends are a thing of the past. Nowadays, really good craftsmanship is what it’s all about.

Niels Meulman, 38, is a man of few words. You won’t hear him saying designers have an important social duty to fulfil. Meulman, who puts out his work under the simple name of ‘Shoe’, gets his pleasure out of making beautiful things. What kind? Well-crafted letters, for instance, that instantly appeal.

He gave himself the name ‘Shoe’ as a street artist. "In one of my graffiti drawings there was a symbol that looked a lot like a shoe," he says. Although by now he’s grown up from an obnoxious kid ("I was one of those guys, everyone used to say, ‘What’s going to become of him?’") into a successful, congenial designer, he’s kept the name ‘Shoe’. It’s typical of his attitude that things that work well don’t need to be changed. Yet that doesn’t mean he’s always consistent. He’s switched employers with great frequency, and he started his fifth company three years ago and has changed business partners several times since then. Meulman just wants to do something new from time to time.

And thus it happened that while working as a senior art director at the Netherlands’ biggest advertising agency, he became an ‘adbuster’ – someone who defaces advertisements, subtly changing the pictures or letters so that the original message takes on a whole new meaning. "Adbusts are a fun game," Meulman says. "But I’m not against advertising. On the contrary, I embrace its visual violence and try to distill out of it the elements that work. As an ad maker, I learned that simple messages still come across best. And if I give the message a nice design, I know it will appeal to people."

Master and apprentice

The biggest constant in his work is his passion for well-made letters. Whether he’s designing an advertising poster or a skateboard, Meulman throws himself with total dedication into making a good typographical whole. Art nouveau-ish letters typify his style. "Those naturally elegant shapes work best," he says. "They’re timeless." He learned the trade from the famous Dutch graphic designer Anthon Beeke. "When I got out of the army, I had made up my mind to go look for a real job," he says. "But I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to go back to the classroom. I strongly believed in the master-apprentice idea. Beeke, who I called up one day to ask for work, didn’t take much persuading. He’d learned the trade that way himself." Under Beeke’s auspices, Shoe developed from a talented graffiti artist into a skilled designer and typographer.

A few years ago, Imagine IC, an Amsterdam foundation that concerns itself with the visual representation of immigrant identity and culture in the Netherlands, asked him to take on a number of young pupils from the Bijlmer in a sort of apprenticeship – this time, he was the master. "The project was intended to help underprivileged youths become designers," he says. "The kids and I designed a coat of arms together for the Bijlmer, a problem neighbourhood in Amsterdam. It was definitely a cool idea, and the project turned out great, but I wonder if it really got the kids much further. Kids who are really determined to become designers will make it with or without a project like this. And you can’t force talent."

Media icon Marshall McLuhan’s famous slogan ‘The medium is the message’ is tattooed on Meulman’s arm. "It’s just a cool saying," he says. But his work is clearly at odds with the idea. Whatever the medium Shoe turns his hand to – the street, a poster, new media – his message remains the same: making good, communicative letters. "At the moment, the main point is good craftsmanship," he says. With his present agency, Unruly, Shoe is focusing on timeless works – because following trends, he says, is totally out of style.