Uitgeverij Contact was a Dutch publishing house founded in Amsterdam in 1933 by Gilles Pieter de Neve. It is best known as the original publisher of Anne Frank’s Het Achterhuis (The Diary of a Young Girl) in 1947. The company merged with several other publishers in 2012 to form Atlas Contact. [1]
Design and History
Helmut Salden (1910-1996), a German-born lettering artist and book designer who fled to the Netherlands in the late 1930s, worked for Uitgeverij Contact among roughly one hundred different publishers during his career. Salden designed covers, bindings and typography for more than nine hundred books and periodicals. [2] His archive, held at Museum Meermanno in The Hague, documents his extensive output for Contact and other houses. [3]
Salden was known for drawing letters by hand rather than relying on existing typefaces, allowing him to control spacing precisely. He also created monograms for publishers and authors. [3] The claim that Salden designed a specific Uitgeverij Contact logo in 1958 could not be verified in available sources. While Salden’s work for Contact is documented, no reliable source confirms a dedicated publisher logo or mark created by him in that year.
Uitgeverij Contact’s visual identity evolved through corporate changes rather than through a single documented logo redesign. In 1974, Contact was incorporated into Bert Bakker publishers, and Contact’s logo continued to appear on some publications until 1984, when it was replaced by Bert Bakker’s mark on later editions of Het Achterhuis. Contact made an independent restart in 1985. [1] In 1992, Uitgeverij Veen and Contact merged and continued under the name Contact. [4] The publisher merged with Uitgeverij Atlas and others in 2012 to form Atlas Contact. [5]
Meaning and Symbolism
Documented symbolism for a Uitgeverij Contact logo is not available in the sources reviewed. Salden’s broader design philosophy, however, is well documented. Contemporary critic Menno ter Braak praised Salden’s ability to balance the need for a cover to stand out in a shop window with the need for it to symbolize the book’s content. Ter Braak noted Salden’s “rarely correct understanding of symbolism” and his sensitivity to the expressiveness of each title. [2]
Logo Index is an independent educational archive covering logos, visual identities and graphic design history. All trademarks and brand assets remain the property of their respective owners.
