Zagen, boren, vijlen – ad for Vickers House

Source: http://www.iconofgraphics.com.License: All Rights Reserved.

… in 1920, [Piet Zwart] got an assignment from the flooring company Vickers House. He made several advertisements for this client. "Zagen, boren, vijlen" [to saw, drill and file] probably is the most iconic of this series. He assembled letters, blanks, and symbols from print houses and played around with them, solving this 'practical print problem'. This work seems to have been influenced by El Lissitzky's "About 2 Squares" which had been published by Van Doesburg in 1922. In this pun one single N serves as the final letter of the first three words. — iconofgraphics.com