“Keep Your Eyes Open” Jan van Toorn on Dutch Design Education AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2000

Interview with Jan van Toorn in Providence, RI, April 15, 1999 

Jan van Toorn, graphic designer and design educator, trained at the Institute for Arts and Crafts in Amsterdam, which later became the Rietveld Academy. The curriculum at the Institute for Arts and Crafts was inspired by the Bauhaus; applied art with a strong emphasis on social context. This principle has profoundly guided Jan van Toorn's design work and teaching philosophy, first at the Rietveld and the Rijksacademie Academies in Amsterdam and then later as the director of the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, a post-graduate centre for design, fine art, and theory in Holland. 

Since 1988, he has served as an influential visiting professor to the graduate program at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, where he continues to this day to encourage students to reflect critically on their practice and thinking.