Jan Van Toorn was born in Tiel, Netherlands, on 9 May 1932. Jan started his career as an apprentice at the printer Mulder & Zoom in Amsterdam. In 1949, He attended evening design classes at the Amstredamse Grafische school and in 1950 he continued his studied at the Instituut vow Kunstnijverheidsonderswijs (later Gerrit Rietveld Academy) in Amsterdam. Since1957, Jan Van Toorn worked as a freelance graphic designer. His clients including Hausemann & Hotte in Amsterdam, Instituut vow Voedingsonderzoek TNO in Zeist, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, the Dutch Ministries of Culture and Public Works, the Dutch PTT, Rosbeek Printers and 010 Publishers. He has won several awards such as Werkman Prize (1965 and 1972), the Piet Zwart prize (1985) and the Athena award for career excellence. (New York, 2004)
His methods and concepts create very radical posters. He twists the problem into the language that made us hard to forget his posters. He studies and analyzes the complexity of the problem makes his design very strong. He was invited at D&AD president lectured in 2009 and you can check the video. Highly recommended.
Due to my respect for Jan Van Toorn, I designed a card for him. Hope he is always inspired by many designers.