Joost Elffers

A Cultural Manifesto for the Sustainist Era

Joost Elffers has initiated, created and published numerous award-winning books, including 48 Laws of Power, Play With Your Food, and Tangram: The Ancient Chinese Shapes Game.

Earlier this year, Elffers and cultural sociologist Michiel Schwarz created, designed and produced in a very intense collaboration, a manifesto where text and image became one message: Sustainism is the New Modernism: A Cultural Manifesto for the Sustainist Era. In this book Elffers designed a series of logos symbolizing various aspects of a sustainist connected society. “With this manifesto and its accompanying imagery, we hope to bring sustainism to society in a more visible and forceful manner.”

As the son of photographer Emmy Andriesse and graphic designer Dick Elffers, Joost has boundless creativity in his DNA. Joost graduated at the Art School in The Hague, but looking back at that period in his life, he came to the conclusion that ‘lessons’ he learned at home were more effective to him than what he learned from his professors.

Elffers lives now more then 30 years in New York, but he is more Dutch than you can imagine.