Dick Bruna Huis

Lonely Planet review

One of Utrecht's favourite sons, Dick Bruna, is honoured at the Dick Bruna Huis. Bruna is the creator of beloved cartoon rabbit Miffy and she naturally takes pride of place, along with an extensive overview of Bruna's career: everything from the book covers he designed for the family publishing company to multimedia demonstrations of his technique and philosophy. Obviously children will get a huge kick out of it all, but so will adults who appreciate superlative graphic design.

Illustrator Dick Bruna was born in Utrecht in 1927 and has lived there all his life. His most famous creation is of course Miffy, or Nijntje as she's known in the Netherlands, an adorable cartoon rabbit with dots for eyes and a cross for a mouth that's a clear inspiration for Japan's famous Hello Kitty character. In fact, Utrecht is sometimes besieged by Japanese groupies, eager to catch a glimpse of their 78-year-old Dutch hero.

As an indication of how popular Miffy is, consider the facts: the 120 children's books she stars in have been translated into 40 languages and have sold more than 85 million copies worldwide. Miffy merchandise has generated hundreds of millions of euros worth of sales.

But there's much more to Dick Bruna than Miffy (wonderful as she is). Our man from Utrecht has written and illustrated more than 100 picture books and designed more than 2000 book covers, as well as hundreds of posters, postcards and prints. Today Bruna still rises to go to work early every day at his Utrecht studio and is still every bit as obsessive in his search for perfect design. As he says, 'I'll never do 3-D illustration. I haven't simplified 2-D enough'.

Bruna says he makes pictograms rather than illustrations; that is, pictures with a clear, instant and universal message. He's a master of light and shade, manipulating blocks of colour for maximum impact, but always with a sense of fun and play - even when designing book covers for Susan Sontag or Eldridge Cleaver, hardly the lightest writers around.

From early on in his career, Bruna imposed strict discipline on his art, working with what he calls a 'minimum of means': a specific thickness of lines, a strict division of typographical areas on the page, and a very specific colour palette. Today, any publisher that reproduces Miffy books must adhere to Bruna's colour ideology or else suffer his wrath. It's unsurprising, then, that Bruna says Piet Mondrian influenced him. There's even a Miffy book, Miffy at the Gallery, where the little rabbit takes in work by Mondrian and Matisse (another Bruna influence).

These days, a swelling body of opinion is beginning to see beyond the stigma of pop culture and 'children's work' that's applied to Miffy, and see her for what she really is: the ultimate statement of intent by an artist who's clearly Mondrian's equal.