Josef Muller-Brockmann: The Grid in Graphic Design

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The Works of Josef Muller-Brockmann

GRAPHIC DESIGNER, TEACHER, STUDENT OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN AND ART HISTORY. Born in Rapperswill, Switzerland on May 9, 1914 as the son of a builder, Josef Müller-Brockmann was one of the leading pioneers of Swiss Modernism — a graphic method reflecting an ethos rooted in minimalism eliminating needless artistic expression and based on a grid. It was understated and didactic, but it was also beautiful and iconic. Indeed, throughout his career he was justly regarded as one of the most talented and resourceful advertising and design artists in Switzerland.

He spent his early childhood in the cities of Rapperswil, Schmerikon, and Uznach. After finishing secondary school in Rapperswil in 1930, Müller-Brockmann began his career as an apprentice to the design and advertising consultant Walter Diggelman. The apprenticeship lasted for two years, and then Müller started auditing courses at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. In 1936 he established his own design studio in Zurich where he specialized in graphics, exhibition design, and photography.

From 1939 to 1945 Müller was in active service in the Swiss army as a lieutenant. It was during his time in the army that Müller married violinist Verena Brockmann and assumed the name Josef Müller-Brockmann, as well as celebrated the birth of his son Andreas. After the war Müller-Brockmann continued his work as a designer and gradually moved away from illustration to constructive design, working as a set designer for various theaters.

By the 1950s he was established as the leading theorist of the Swiss Style. During this time, MüllerBrockmann developed a friendship with Samuel Hirschi, Secretary of the Tonhalle, which led to many years of collaborative work. He also became a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 1951.

A History of Graphic Design Project

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From 1957 to 1960, Müller-Brockmann was a professor of graphic design at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Zurich, and the Hochschule für Gestaltung at Ulm. He contributed to many symposiums and held oneman exhibitions in Zurich, Bern, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Berlin, Paris, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Osaka, Caracas and Zagreb Müller-Brockmann was the founder and co-editor of Neue Grafik magazine with Richard Paul Lohse, Hans Neuburg and Carlo Vivarelli, which spread the principles of Swiss design internationally.

In 1961 he wrote The Graphic Artist and his Design Problems and Grid Systems in Graphic Design where he advocated the use of the grid for page structure. From 1961 to 1963 he was a guest lecturer at institutions like the University of Osaka and the Hochschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm. The 1960’s saw many changes in Josef Müller-Brockmann’s life. In 1964, his wife Verena was killed in an accident. In that same year, Müller-Brockmann designed the “Education, Science, and Research” section for the Swiss National Fair. Three years later, in 1967, Müller-Brockmann was appointed consultant to IBM Europe, founded the Müller-Brockmann & Co. advertising agency, and married his second wife artist Shizuko Yoshikawa.

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In 1971 he published History of the Poster and A History of Visual Communication.

The 1990’s brought tragedy yet again to Josef Muller-Brockmann’s life with the death of his son Andreas in 1993.

The work of Müller-Brockmann is legendary and he is best remembered for his commercial work for IBM, Geigy, Olivetti, Rosenthal and the Swiss Railway. He kept working, travelling and exhibiting his work until he died in 1996. At the time of his death, Josef MullerBrockmann was an Honorary Member of the Brno Biennale and of the Russian Academy of Graphic Design, Moscow.

A History of Graphic Design Project

I still reserve the right, at any time, to doubt the solutions furnished by the Modular, keeping intact my freedom, which must depend on my feelings rather than my reason.

Josef Müller-Brockmann

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When you consider the time of Josef Müller-Brockmann’s career, which included the Second World War, the Cold War and the growing influence of a Europe on the mend from destruction and fear, he certainly influenced not only a design style that influenced designers on a global scale. It was a time of rebirth for many nations that lay in ruins, rebuilding and rethinking centuries of tradition that were forced to change due to the brutality of war and cruelty.

Müller-Brockmann was more than just a man who sought to form what is now labeled the Swiss School; Constructivism, De Still, Suprematism and the Bauhaus, all of which pushed his designs in a new direction that opened doors for creative ex-pressions in graphic 6

The Works of Josef Muller-Brockmann

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The Works of Josef Muller-Brockmann

design, influenced him. Among his peers he is probably the most easily recognized when looking at that period.

Some of his most recognized work was done for the Zurich Town Hall as poster advertisements for its theater productions. The work is graphic, rather than illustrative. Some critics say these posters created a mathematical harmony, which reflected the harmony of music. If one studies posters before that time, they would probably all agree that these are a bold and different way to play to visual messages dealing with music. Who would think of such a graphic? Who would dare execute such work at that time? If you look at the jazz and fusion albums in America at the time, you can see Mßller-Brockmann’s influence.

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The Diagram above is the perfect illustration of Josef Muller-Brockmann's grid and the use of it. You can see that the page is split into three columns both vertically and horizontally. Within those columns each circle is proportionately distribeted and that the circles, in their distribution, all make 90째 angles when a line is drawn from center to center of each of the circles. This is the perfect harmony we are talking about.

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The Works of Josef Muller-Brockmann

His design sense of the 1950s aimed to create posters that communicated with the masses. This was no small feat as the pieces had to communicate across a language barrier, with English, French, German and Italian speaking populations in Switzerland alone.

It was the harmony and simplicity of these pieces that influenced a post-war world that had lost the sense of central nationalism and gained a lesson in the need for globalization. MĂźller-Brockmann was soon established as the leading practitioner and theorist of the Swiss Style, which sought a universal graphic expression through a grid-based design, purged of extraneous illustration and subjective feeling.

“Order was always wishful thinking for me.

For 60 years I have produced disorder in files, correspondence and books. In my work, however, I have always aspired to a distinct arrangement of typographic and pictorial elements, the clear identification of priorities.

The formal organization of the surface by means of the grid, a knowledge of the rules that govern legibility (line length, word and letter spacing and so on) and the meaningful use of color are among the tools a designer must master in order to complete his or her task in a rational and economic manner.�

The grid was the prioritization and arrangement of A History of Graphic Design Project

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The Simple gesture of a handshake. In most languages the gesture of a handshake is the solidification of a deal. It used to be that you could take a "mans word" based on his good name and a handshake. The gesture in this poster, to me, represents a friendly handshake over an automobile transaction. Infact the literal translation of "das freundliche Handzeichen" is "the amicable meeting with a handgesture." The text "Schutzt vor Unfallen" translates to "protection against an accident".

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The Works of Josef Muller-Brockmann

typographic and pictorial elements with the meaningful use of color, set into a semblance of order, based on left-to-right, topto-bottom.

Grid systems in graphic design

by Müller-Brockmann, helped propagate the use of the grid, first in Europe, and later in North America.

After World War II, a number of graphic designers, including Max Bill, Emil Ruder, and Josef Müller-Brockmann, influenced by the modernist ideas of Jan Tschichold’s Die neue Typographie (The New Typography), began to question the relevance of the conventional page layout of the time. They began to de¬vise a flexible system able to help designers achieve coherency in organizing the page. The result was the modern typographic grid that became associated with the International Typographic Style.

The seminal work on the subject,

Müller-Brockmann is recognized for his simple designs and his clean use of typography, notably Akzidenz-Grotesk, shapes and colors, which inspires many graphic designers in the 21st century. As with the French posters in the 1890s, Müller-Brockmann and his peers also attempted to attract customers and sell products with bold, simplicity.

A History of Graphic Design Project

The posters that served to attract an audience to events, especially music events and museum exhibitions embraced the abstract geometrical shapes the style is 13

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The Works of Josef Muller-Brockmann

THE GRID SYSTEM IS AN AID, NOT A GUARANTEE. IT PERMITS A NUMBER OF POSSIBLE USES AND EACH DESIGNER CAN LOOK FOR A SOLUTION APPROPIATE TO HIS PERSONAL STYLE. BUT ONE MUST LEARN HOW TO USE THE GRID; IT IS AN ART THAT REQUIRES PRACTICE. JOSEF MULLER-BROCKMANN

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Die Neue Haas’ Grotesk

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The Works of Josef Muller-Brockmann

noted for; but it is the public service announcement posters from this time period that have been more noted than in many other periods of design. The simple, clean and graphic messages were, as with the music event posters, able to be understood by viewers with different languages.

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IMAGE AND CONTENT SOURCES:

http://www.noupe.com/design/josef-muller-brockmann-principal-of-the-swiss-school.html http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/reputations-josef-muller-brockmann www.filterfine.com www.hogd.pbworks.com www.wordsandeggs.wordpress.com www.tumblr.com www.designinspiration.net www.nikkor.tumblr.co www.change the thought.com www.aqua-velvet.com www.designhistory.com www.kmurable.blogspot.com www. madirichardson.wordpress.com

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The Works of Josef Muller-Brockmann

In a 1995 interview with eye magazine, muller was asked, "What do you regard as your best work?" His response was, THE WHITE REVERSE SIDES OF MY POSTERS!

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