who
CoMa is Cornelia Blatter & Marcel Hermans. We are a design studio and publisher from Amsterdam and New York. Cornelia Blatter studied at ZHdK in Zurich and Yale University in New Haven, and Marcel Hermans at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. As a Swiss-Dutch-American duo, we set up CoMa in 1996 and have been working as a team ever since.

design
Deeply rooted in editorial design, we create visual narratives for cultural and commercial clients who appreciate the transformative power of design. We have worked with a diverse range of institutions, organizations, companies and talented professionals—writers, editors, publishers, photographers, artists, architects, curators, critics, entrepreneurs, distributors, programmers and printers—on projects including books, magazines, brand identities, exhibitions and websites. Our work reflects our diverse backgrounds, blending Swiss precision and Dutch directness with the playfulness of American pop culture.

publishing
In 2024, we launched CoMa Art Books, a micro-publishing imprint dedicated to producing limited-edition art books in collaboration with artists whose work we love. Special attention is given to paper, colour, printing and binding. These are not comprehensive publications but focused projects centred on a single theme or narrative. Each is conceived as an artistic project in its own right, offering a close look at a particular aspect of the artist’s work.

teaching
Besides running our design office, we have been critics and teachers at Yale University, held workshops, and lectured at RISD in Rhode Island, Northeastern University in Boston, CalArts and ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles, HfG in Karlsruhe, and FHNW in Basel. In 2011, we founded COMA Dutch designLAB and have been curating and hosting design intensives for students from Boston University and OTIS College of Art and Design. The programme of workshops, projects, lectures, studio visits and museum visits introduces participants to new forms of design thinking and broadens an understanding of what design can be.

words
“Funky display mingles with structured layouts, reflecting CoMa’s enjoyment of American pop culture alongside Northern Europe’s more rational design ethos … These designers think like architects and filmmakers as well as graphic designers, bringing a sense of time and a concern for program to the printed page.”
—Ellen Lupton, curator, educator, and writer