Typography and Design 1850-1960s
Futura in Light, Medium, and Bold Main body text at 10 points Header text at 58, 34, 87 points Futura designed by Paul Renner, 1927
Drama of the 1850’s-1960’s Movement of the Art World and Its Inhabitants
Abigail Rohde | Megan Rook | Kyle Shemek
1850’s-1960’s
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The Arts and Crafts Movement Arts & Crafts & William Le Corbusier: Man of Many Skills Edward Johnston: The Search is On Herbert Bayer goes to Bauhaus
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Dada Movement Dada
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Table of Contents
Avant-Garde Movement History and De Stijl Avant-Garde Artists Piet Zwart Jan Tschichold John Heartfield
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De Stijl Movement De Stijl Artists
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Futurist Movement Futurism
Vilmos Huszar
Paul Renner
Theo Van Doesburg
Russian Contructivisim Alexey Brodovitch
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ARTS & CRAFTS
MOVEMENT The Arts and Crafts movement emerged during the late Victorian period in England, the most industrialized country in the world at that time. Anxieties about industrial life fueled a positive revaluation of handcraftsmanship and precapitalist forms of culture and society. Arts and Crafts designers sought to improve standards of decorative design, believed to have been debased by mechanization, and to create environments in which beautiful and fine workmanship governed. The Arts and Crafts movement did not promote a particular style, but it did advocate reform as part of its philosophy and instigated a critique of industrial labor; as modern machines replaced workers, Arts and Crafts proponents called for an end to the division of labor and advanced the designer as craftsman.
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The Arts & Crafts & William Morris The 19th century and the Industrial Revolution took place in the 18801899 CE. The Industrial Revolution had a dramatic impact upon typography and the graphic arts. New technology radically altered printing, and designers responded with an outpouring of new forms and images. As Arts and Crafts influenced movements were formed in the late 1880s and 1890s by artist in Glasgow, Vienna, London, Paris, Berlin, and other European cultural centers, they diverged in attitudes and goals. Designers redefined the nature of their work in the Mid-century British Arts and Crafts
William Morris Wallpaper (1)
Movement. The idea of craft-based guilds attracted graphic designers eager to participate in the socially conscious enterprises begun by the Arts and Crafts movement. A new designer emerged, intent on addressing broad social and cultural issues through deliberate principles of design practice. Those invested in the Arts and Crafts movement envisioned an alternative to industrial forms. The Arts and Crafts movement is an international spectrum of movements contributed to the explicit assertion of a modern identity for graphic design. The influence of Arts and Crafts styles and ideals was linked to the economic force and cultural reach of the British Empire. British Arts and Crafts movement affected the evolution of graphic and other design disciplines throughout Europe and the United States well into the 20th century. Arts and Crafts inspired movements
sprang up in California, the Midwest, and the Eastern United States. Scottish Arts and Crafts invoked Celtic roots that were as mythic as they were historical. These ethic motifs resonated with themes of renewal and rebirth that were central to the Zeitgeist. Scottish Arts and Crafts practitioners shared their English counterparts’ aesthetic concerns and progressive commitment to material integrity and honesty of production. The Arts and Crafts movement didn’t just effect paper materials. Architecture, furniture, textiles, glassware, metalwork, jewelry, fashion, literature, and fine art took up the ethos and aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts movement. The Arts and Crafts movement had an enormous impact on the design of fine press and trade books and independent artists’ journals. To spread the principles that inspired arts and Crafts workshops, artist produced their own publications. Artists and writers took control of every practical aspect of these publications, seeking handmade paper and collaborating with printers through every phase of production. Distribution networks that had been established for commercial and popular press
The impulse to return craft traditions productive dialogue with evolved to into a industry.
William Morris was a social activist, a poet, a designer of wallpapers, and believed in the beauty of everyday life. William Morris stressed the dignity of labor in his equation: art = work/ pleasure. Necessary work was, at this point, seen as a human capacity applied through the
William Morris Wallpaper
William Morris (2)
publications brought these artistic journals into public view in kiosks and bookstores. Arts and Crafts publications where The Philistine, The Studio, and the Hobby Horse. Most mass-produced books in the 19th century were of appalling quality, careless design, and poor workmanship. This gave rise to the concept of “The book beautiful.� This ideal was formulated in conversations between the ubiquitous William Morris and his colleague Emery Walker in the late 1880s who sought to restore the beauty of useful objects.
action of tools on raw materials to produce goods or services [usually through wage labor.] During his lifetime, Morris produced items in a range of crafts, mainly those to do with furnishing,including over 600 designs for wall-paper, textiles, and embroideries, over 150 for stained glass windows, three typefaces, and around 650 borders and ornamentations for the Kelmscott Press. Morris was instrumental in the founding of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.,
which would later evolve to just Morris & Co.. Morris & Co. and their publishing divisionKelmscott Press contributed much of the work that is associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.
Le Corbusier: Man of Many Skills
Villa Savoye By Le Corbusier (4)
Charles-Edourd Jeanneret or Le Corbusier was a man of many skill. He participated in painting, architecture, and design. In 1887, Corbusier was a Swiss-born French architect who belonged to the first generation of the so-called International school of architecture. Le Corbusier made three major architectural discoveries. In various settings, he witnessed and absorbed the importance of the contrast between large collective spaces and individual compartmentalized spaces, an observation that formed the basis for his vision of residential buildings and later became vastly influential. Morer treasures discovered was classical prportion via Renaissance architecture and geometric forms and the use of landscape as an architectural tool.
In 1912, Le Corbusier returned to La Chaux-de-Fonds to teach alongside L’Eplattenier and to open his own architectural practice. He designed a series of villas and began to theorize on the use of reinforced concrete as a structural frame, a thoroughly modern technique. Le Corbusier began to envisage buildings designed from these concepts as affordable prefabricated housing that would help rebuild cities after World War I came to an end. The floor plans of the proposed housing consisted of open space, leaving out obstructive support poles, freeing exterior and interior walls from the usual structural constraints. This design system became the backbone for most of Le Corbusier’s architecture for the next ten years. In 1948 Le Corbusier publishes Modular One and Modular Two
Le Corbusier
In 1917, Le Corbusier moved to Paris, where he worked as an architect on concrete structures under government contracts. In 1947 Le Corbusier’s Marseille Apartment Block is built. which was used as a system to set out a number of Corbusier’s buildings and was later codified into two books. Overall, the grid states the proportions of a man raisng his arm can be applied to the measurements and structure of a building. He also spent his efforts on the more influential, and at the time more lucrative, discipline of painting. Bogota shows four people playing instruments. Corbusier had an ear for music too.
Grid System By Le Corbusier (6)
Bogota By Le Corbusier (7)
Edward Johnston: The Search is On By 1913 he was a founding member and editor of “The Imprint” magazine, of which there are a total of nine issues. In 1915 Frank Pick, the director of London Transport, commissions Johnston to design a typeface for the London Underground’s corporate identity. Johnston, along with Eric Gill, designed uppercase letters, numbers, and a few symbols for the London Underground signage system, introduced in 1916.
Edward was a type designer, calligrapher, author, teacher. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh where in 1898 he obtains his Ph.D. Later he moves to London and studies ancient writing techniques in the British Museum. From 1899 to 1913 he teaches at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in the new lettering department.
The name of this accomplishment was Cranach Press Italic typeface. Johnston works with London Transport until 1940. By 1979 Johnston’s London Transport type is reworked by Colin Banks to produce New Johnston. In 1928 an edition of “Hamlet” is published with Johnston’s Hamlet-Type and woodcuts by Edward Gordon Craig.
Edward Johnston was born
In 1906 his book “Writing and Illuminating and Lettering” is published, causing something of a “renaissance” for calligraphy. It is considered the most influential book on calligraphy ever written. Underground Sign (9)
Edward Johnston’s Standard Alphabet
Edward Johnston’s standard alphabet (10)
Evolution of Typography The 20th century was a period of incredible ferment and change. Unprecedented advances in science and technology, and revolutionary developments in art and design left their marks on typography. Photography, technical changes in printing, new reproduction techniques, social changes, and new attitudes have also helped to erase the frontiers between the graphic arts, painting, architecture, poetry, and typography and have
encouraged typography to become more visual, less linguistic, and less purely linear. But of course modern typography was not the abrupt invention of one man or even of one group. It emerged in response to new demands and new opportunities thrown up by the 19th-century.
Herbert Bayer goes to Bauhaus
Herbert Bayer’s alphabet (11)
A man who worked his mind in many crafts such as painting, sculpture, typography, advertisting and architecture.
In Herbert’s early years as a student he studied painting with Kandinsky, but in just a short while he was teaching one of the Bauhaus’ first classes on typography. He spent time teaching at the Bauhaus, working as an Art Director for the Container Corporation and as an architect in both Germany and America. In between his time at the Bauhaus and his career in America he spent time as the Art Director of Vogue magazine’s Berlin office. Bayer took over the typography workshop from 1923, when the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, until he left in 1928. During that time, as he was developing his own vision of graphic design, his influence as a teacher was far-reaching. He is one of the most recognized designers to come from the Bauhaus institution and his theories of design are still taught in many schools today. In 1926, Herbert Bayer designed for a typeface that consisted of entirely lowercase letters. The German
blackletter types were overly ornate for his taste and their use of capital letter for every proper noun was annoying. Logically, Bayer developed a sans-serif alphabet of lowercase letters titled “Universal.” This project was called the standard alphabet. Few designs apply the rules of a system in strict allegiance to modern principles of reductive functionalism to the same degree as Bayer’s design for a single-case alphabet. In 1946 Bayer moved to Aspen, Colorado where he spent much of his time designing local architecture and posters for the local community. In 1959 he designed another sans-serif typeface. Again it was all in lower case, but he called it “fonetik alfabet” and it contained special characters for the endings -ed, -ion, -ory and -ing. Derived from the same set of streamlined elements that defined his earlier “universal” type designs, the alphabet was meant to serve any and all printing and writing purposesThe letters retain their elegance and
Bauhaus established a concept of design as a discipline. The Bauhaus was a school whose approach to design and the combination of fine art and arts and crafts proved to be a major influence on the development of graphic design as well as much of 20th century modern art. Founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany in 1919, the school moved to Dessau in 1924 and then was forced to close its doors, under pressure from the Nazi political party, in 1933. The school favored simplified forms, rationality, functionality and the idea that mass production could live in harmony with the artistic spirit of individuality.
Bauhaus School (13)
Among its many contributions to the development of design, the Bauhaus taught typography as part of its curriculum and was instrumental in the development of sans-serif typography, which they favored for its simplified geometric forms and as an alternative to the heavily ornate German standard of blackletter typography. The Bauhaus provided a pedagogical lab in which the formal innovations of early avant-garde experiment were absorbed and systematically applied to architecture, graphic design, and industrial design. Catalogue cover design for Bauhaus exhibit (12)
consistency throughout. The quest for pure, minimal, and universal typefaces was not unique to Bayer or the Bauhaus.
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DADA MOVEMENT The Dada Movement started in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. It was a radical new way of type and graphic design that completely disregarded everything that everyone had previously known about type. Instead of being simplistic, structured and the normal typesetting, it was everything but that. The typography was sprinkled across the page and was also often set in different fonts and point sizes. Some designers even used vertical type setting more regulary to further their layouts even more from the norm. Dada wasn’t just about a radical new type setting style, but it also brought rise to the ‘readymade’ art. This art was a controversial new style that many people didn’t even consider to be art at all, yet some said it was the most important new art style of the 20th century. Artists used already manufactured objects and added their own twist to them, whether it be with paint or any other medium.
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DADA E
“ ach page must explode, either by deep and weight seriousness—the whirlwind, the vertigo, the new, the eternal—by the crushing jokes, by the enthusiasm for the principles, or by the manner of being printed.” -Tristan Tzara
The period of Dadaism was a time of great change in the art world. The idea of clean and tidy was thrown out the window for a radical new approach to graphic design. Rather than using the normal way of type design, they used new things like vertical set type and sprinkled text throughout the page. Describing the art that came from this time period can be quite difficult. Each piece was so different from the last and not many Dada pieces even look like they were made in the same time period. Printing techniques had improved greatly in the early 1900’s and now print was everywhere. This allowed Dada artists like Marcel Duchamp and Tristan Tzara to create the wildest forms of art they could imagine.
Marcel Duchamp was one of the leaders of the Dada movement by use of his “readymade” objects. He would take objects that were already manufactured and make his own art out of them. His most famous piece was called “Fountain”, done in 1917. Many art critics call this piece one of the most important landmarks of the 20th century. His piece stirred up so much controversy because of the way he described it. He called it a fountain, but in reality it was just a urinal flipped 90 degrees with the words “R Mutt 1917” painted on the side. He called this art because to him it was an ordinary thing you see everyday, but simply by painting a few words on it, flipping it on it’s back, and calling it a fountain it forced the audience to have a different point of view on it. It made you really think when you saw it for the first time.
Marcel Duchamp ‘Fountain” 1917 (14)
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AVANT-GARDE
MOVEMENT The first three decades of twentieth century art gave rise to a wave of revolutionary movements and styles. First, came Fauvism (1905-8) whose colour schemes were so dramatic and anti-nature that its members were dubbed ‘wild beasts’. Then Analytical Cubism (1908-12) - probably the most intellectual of all the avant-garde movements - which rejected the conventional idea of linear perspective in favour of greater emphasis on the two-dimensional picture plane, scandalizing the arts academies of Europe - along with visitors to the Parisian Salon des Independants and the New York Armory Show (1913) - in the process. Meanwhile, in Dresden, Munich and Berlin, German Expressionism was the cutting edge style, as practised by Die Brucke (1905-13) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911-14), while in Milan, Futurism introduced its unique blend of movement and modernity. Avant-gardism during the 1940s onwards, came in fits and starts. This was partly because abstract art dominated, and there was very little about abstraction that was fundamentally new. Minimalism streamlined it and attempted to inject it with a more high-powered message, but the public weren’t really interested. They much preferred Pop art - the new 60s aesthetic which suddenly made art accessible again.
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PIET ZWART
Dutch photographer, typographer, industrial designer and critic Piet Zwart was born 28 may 1885 in Zaandijk, the Netherlands. From 1902 till 1907 he attended the School of Applied Arts in Amsterdam where there was little division between several disciplines as drawing, painting, architecture and applied arts. He was introduced to the principles of the English Arts and Crafts movement, which was extremely popular in the early 1900’s in the Netherlands. Zwart and his fellow students Hoeksema, de Koo and Jac. Jongert mostly developed by themselves with little interference from above, as teachers weren’t always present.”A smashing school with no idea of a programme” as Zwart recalls.*During WWI Zwart focussed on furniture, interior and fabric design, all of these with a decorative touch. The
social revolution after the war and new artistic ideas of the Avant-garde offered him a possible new direction. Zwart decided to leave his craft designs behind. Piet Zwart’s career in graphic design was launched in 1919 when he started as a draftsman for the architect Jan Wils, who was a member of the De Stijl-group. Two years later he became assistant of the influential Dutch architect H.P. Berlage, whom he would work with for several years. Among his assignments was the design of a christian science church, a municipal museum in The Hague and a breakfast set for which he used hexagon and circular shapes. Though he was formally trained as an architect, Piet Zwart is mainly known for his graphic design work. At the age of 36 Zwart produced his first typographic work when asked to
design stationery for Wils’ office. This work clearly echoed the title lettering for the De Stijl periodical. This is no surprise, as during this period he met his close neighbour Vilmos Huszàr who co-founded the De Stijl magazine and designed the cover for the first issue. Together they would exchange thoughts and engage in several projects. He initially felt strongly attracted to the radical ideas of Theo van Doesburg and De Stijl, which propagated an abstract utopian world. But he did not wish to surrender entirely to the dogmatic ideas of De Stijl. His work was too playful to be restricted by dogmatism. Zwart was also drawn to dadaïsm and the international avant-garde, particularly Russian Constructivism. A year later, in 1920, he got an assignment from the flooring company Vickers House. He made several advertisements for this client. “Zagen, boren, vijlen” (saws, drills and files) 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’. Piet Zwart was not an easy man, he was known for his indiscretion. He worked like a madman. The light did not go out before three o’clock at night. He barely went on vacation and spent most of his time at his desk. He introduced high standards for himself and fought all his life against the baroque tendency in himself he so much detested as a functionalist. All work comes to an end in July 1942 when he is arrested by German soldiers. Zwart, along with 800 other prominents, is being held hostage. After the war, when being released, he mainly focussed on
industrial design. His versatility and his influence on present-day designers led the Association of Dutch Designers to award him the title of ‘Designer of the Century’ in 2000.
* quote from ‘Pioneers of modern typography’ by Herbert Spencer and Rick Poynor
“ The more uninteresting the letter, the more useful it is to the typographer.“
JAN TSCHICHOLD
“The aim of every typographic work - the delivery of a message in the shortest, most efficient manner.”
Tschichold claimed that he was one of the most powerful influences on 20th century typography. There are few who would attempt to deny that statement. The son of a sign painter and trained in calligraphy, Tschichold began working with typography at a very early age. Raised in Germany, he worked closely with Paul Renner (who designed Futura) and fled to Switzerland during the rise of the Nazi party. His emphasis on new typography and sans-serif typefaces was deemed a threat to the cultural heritage of Germany, which traditionally used Blackletter Typography and the Nazis seized much of his work before he was able to flee the country. When Tschichold wrote Die Neue Typographie he set forth rules for standardization of practices relating to modern type usage. He condemned all typefaces except for sans-serif types, advocated standardized sizes of paper and set forth guidelines for establishing a typographic hierarchy when using type in design. While the text still has many relative uses today, Tschichold eventually returned to a classicist theory in which centered designs and roman typefaces were favored for blocks of copy. He spent part of his career with Penguin Books and while he was there he developed a standardized practice for creating the covers for all of the books produced by Penguin. He personally oversaw the development of more than 500 books between the years 1947-49. Every period of his career has left a lasting impression on how designers think about and use typography, and it will continue to affect them into the future.
JOHN HEARTFIELD
John Heartfield, a versatile and prolific artist, was born Helmut Herzfelde in Berlin in 1891. At the tender age of seven he lost both parents. In 1905-06 he served an apprenticeship as a bookseller in Wiesbaden before going to Munich to study at the “Kunstgewerbeschule” from 1908 to 1911. After a brief interval as a graphic artist in Mannheim, Helmut Herzfelde returned to Berlin where he studied once again until 1914, when the first world war broke out. In 1915-16 he was inducted for active service into the German armed forces. In 1916 Helmut Herzfelde was so incensed at the anti-British feeling in Germany that
he protested by changing his name to John Heartfield, using this pseudonym for the rest of his career. That same year, 1916, In 1917 John Heartfield became a follower of the Dada movement in Berlin and that same year he joined the German Communist Party (KPD). He met George Grosz, who, like Heartfield, worked for the leftwing satirical publications “Die Pleite” and “Der Knüppel”. John Heartfield developed an experimental approach to the graphic arts. He often worked with photomontage,
using the medium to create pictures that made powerful statements. Under the influence of George Grosz, John Heartfield went on from there to develop the political photomontage. In 1929 Heartfield contributed photomontages to Kurt Tucholsky’s “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles”. In 1938 he reached London, where among other things he designed book covers for Penguin Books. Returning to Germany in 1950, John Heartfield designed stage sets, working for Bertold Brecht and other directors.
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DE STIJL MOVEMENT The first three decades of twentieth century art gave rise to a wave of revolutionary movements and styles. First, came Fauvism (1905-8) whose colour schemes were so dramatic and anti-nature that its members were dubbed ‘wild beasts’. Then Analytical Cubism (1908-12) - probably the most intellectual of all the avant-garde movements - which rejected the conventional idea of linear perspective in favour of greater emphasis on the two-dimensional picture plane, scandalizing the arts academies of Europe - along with visitors to the Parisian Salon des Independants and the New York Armory Show (1913) - in the process. Meanwhile, in Dresden, Munich and Berlin, German Expressionism was the cutting edge style, as practised by Die Brucke (1905-13) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911-14), while in Milan, Futurism introduced its unique blend of movement and modernity.
Avant-gardism during the 1940s onwards, came in fits and starts. This was partly because abstract art dominated, and there was very little about abstraction that was fundamentally new. Minimalism streamlined it and attempted to inject it with a more high-powered message, but the public weren’t really interested. They much preferred Pop art - the new 60s aesthetic which suddenly made art accessible again.
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VILMOS HUSZAR
The Hungarian artist Vilmos Huszár studied in 1901 at the School for the Applied Arts in Budapest. After protracted sojourns in Munich, Paris and London, Vilmos Huszár went to the Netherlands in 1908. Vilmos Huszár was an interior decorator, painter and graphic designer. In 1916 he produced his first abstract work. By 1917 Vilmos Huszár was a co-founder of De Stijl along with the painters Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, and Bart van der Leck, the architect J.J.P. Oud, the poet Willem Kok and others. This important group of artists chose its name from the art journal “De Stijl”, which was also founded in 1917, by Mondrian and van Doesburg and continued to be published (with interruptions) until 1932. The De Stijl artists rejected all forms of naturalistic
“Huszár’s work - especially his painting - can be said to have
bridged the gap between these styles and the simple geometric abstraction that’s signature to De Stijl.” representation, reducing their compositions to horizontal and vertical basic elements and using a palette consisting of the primary colors blue, red, and yellow with the addition of black and white. Vilmos Huszár used the experience he gained as a painter with these principles of style in interior decoration and designing furniture and textiles. This meant that his interpretation of the interior was based on the two-dimensional impression it made. Spatial depth in a Vilmos Husár interior was to be influenced, i.e., enhanced or moderated, by polychrome floors, walls, and ceilings, and reinforced by the polychromy of the furnishings. Space was regarded as the sum of surfaces of different colors and material substance. Between 1917 and 1921 Vilmos Huszár designed the covers for the journal “De Stijl” and wrote several articles. Vilmos Huszár remained a member of De Stijl until 1923 but in the years that followed he returned to representational painting.
THEO VAN DOESBURG
Theo van Doesburg. Born August 30, 1883 in the Netherlands and died March 7, 1931, dutch painter, decorator, poet, and art theorist who was a leader of the De Stijl movement. Originally van Doesburg wanted to pursue a career in the theatre, but he decided to become a painter in 1900. He worked in Post-Impressionist and Fauvist styles until 1915, when he discovered Piet Mondrian’s work, which convinced van Doesburg to paint geometric abstractions of subjects from nature. His paintings used strict vertical and horizontal shapes and primary, until about 1920. In 1917 van Does-
“We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a colour, a surface.” burg was an active founder in forming the De Stijl group of artists. Among the artists involved with De Stijl was the Dutch architect J.J.P. Oud, for whom van Doesburg first designed stained-glass windows in 1916. His collaborations with architects continued throughout his career, as he went on to design more stained glass, as well as floor tiles and overall color schemes. Van Doesburg turned his attention away from painting around 1920, focusing instead on the promotion of De Stijl in Germany and France. He lectured at the Weimar Bauhaus from 1921 to 1923, and his De Stijl theories subsequently influenced the Modernist architects Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. While in Germany, van Doesburg developed an interest inDada art after meeting the artist Kurt Schwitters; using the alias I.K. Bonset, van Doesburg exhibited as a Dadaist in Holland in 1923 and published the Dada art review Mechano. Van Doesburg returned to painting around 1924, at which time he decided to introduce the diagonal into his compositions to increase their dynamic effect. He named his new approach “elementarism,” and in 1926 he published a manifesto explaining it in De Stijl. Mondrian so disapproved of the concept that he rejected the De Stijl movement. In 1931 van Doesburg was involved in the formation of the Abstraction-Création association, a group of artists who advocated pure abstraction.
JOSEF MULLER-BROCKMANN
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When you think of the Swiss-International type style, the one name that is probably mentioned most is Josef M端ller-Brockmann. Although he falls into the Swiss category, his work was heavily influenced by the Bauhaus and De Stijl, as well as several other styles around during the time.
M端ller-Brockmann was born in Switzerland and lived there his whole life, where he spent his time devoted to poster design and writing design books. Arguably his best work was done when he did the Zurich Town Hall posters. In these advertisements, rather than using an illustrative approach he used a more graphic style. People have said that they somehow create a mathematical harmony.
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Another major accomplishment of Josef M端llerBrockmann was his creation of the flexible typographic grid. His grid system was quite different than the conventional, run of the mill type layouts that had been popular previously. It created a system that allowed the designers to achieve better coherency and hierarchy throughout the page while still allowing for a more interesting layout. Although his design layouts were
seemingly minimal and clean, they used this new grid system and that is what made his designs so memorable. People around the globe really bought into the clean, bold, simplistic system that they had never really seen before. For the first time, simplicity in typography was seen as more powerful than trying to fill the page with as much as they possibly could.
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FUTURIST MOVEMENT Futurism was an Italian, avant-garde movement that was started in 1909 by a man named Filippo Marinetti. He wrote what was called the “Futurist Manifesto” which explained how he hated anything and everything that was old, especially politics. In one of his manifestos he said, “I undertake a typgraphical revolution, directed especially against the idioticand nauseous conception of old fashioned books of verses... better still, my revolution is against what is called typgraphic harmony of the page”. He continued to write these manifestos and went over several topics including architecture, painting, cooking, and pretty much anything else you could think of. His radical ideas and new way of thinking really caught on with the youth of the early 20th century. They were fascinated with all things that are new and hip, which is exactly what Marinetti was trying to emphasize. Many of the Futurist art pieces reflect ths as they focus on speed and technology. Several of the pieces include airplanes or automobiles and skyscrapers, all things made by man that were considered advanced technologically. Marinetti’s Futurist masterpiece was called “Zang TUMB TUMB!”. This poem was written about the story of the siege of the Bulgarians of theTurkish Adrianopole during the Balkan war, which Marinetti had witnessed first hand as a reporter. This poem doesn’t seem like it was anything new or exciting until you see how it was typset. He wrote the poem in a way that used no verbs or adjectives, just nouns. He sprinkled the text across the page, some parts in bold that needed more emphasis, some very small that were not as important. The way he designed this poem was entirely about typographic expression. Instead of just reading normal words, you get a feeling from each individual piece of the word soley from the way he arranged them. His entire system of meaning was derived from only the size and placement of the words and letters, something that no one else had ever really done before. This style of scattered text completely shattered every ounce of the societal norm of linear writing. Marinetti did not stop at trying to entirely change typography though. He was a follower of Mussolini’s Fascist regime and carried some extremely radical viewpoints. For instance, he believed that we should do away with schools, libraries and museums entirely as a way to sever ties with the past.
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Futurism Early 20th Century
Fillipo Marinetti “Fortunato Depero (Skyscrapers and Tunnels) 1930 (37)
Futurism was an Italian, avant-garde movement that was started in 1909 by a man named Filippo Marinetti. He wrote what was called the “Futurist Manifesto” which explained how he hated anything and everything that was old, especially politics. In one of his manifestos he said, “I undertake a typgraphical revolution, directed especially against the idioticand nauseous conception of old fashioned books of verses... better still, my revolution is against what is called typgraphic harmony of the page”. He continued to write these manifestos and went over several topics including architecture, painting, cooking, and pretty much anything else you could think of. His radical ideas and new way of thinking really caught on with the youth of the early 20th century. They were fascinated with all things that are new and hip, which is exactly what Marinetti was trying to emphasize. Many of the Futurist art pieces reflect ths as they focus on speed and technology. Several of the pieces include airplanes or automobiles and skyscrapers, all things made by man that were considered advanced technologically. Marinetti’s Futurist masterpiece was called “Zang TUMB TUMB!”. This poem was written about the story of the siege
of the Bulgarians of theTurkish Adrianopole during the Balkan war, which Marinetti had witnessed first hand as a reporter. This poem doesn’t seem like it was anything new or exciting until you see how it was typset. He wrote the poem in a way that used no verbs or adjectives, just nouns. He sprinkled the text across the page, some parts in bold that needed more emphasis, some very small that were not as important. The way he designed this poem was entirely about typographic expression. Instead of just reading normal words, you get a feeling from each individual piece of the word soley from the way he arranged them. His entire system of meaning was derived from only the size and placement of the words and letters, something that no one else had ever really done before. This style of scattered text completely shattered every ounce of the societal norm of linear writing. Marinetti did not stop at trying to entirely change typography though. He was a follower of Mussolini’s Fascist regime and carried some extremely radical viewpoints. For instance, he believed that we should do away with schools, libraries and museums entirely as a way to sever ties with the past.
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Paul Renner
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Paul Renner was a many of many talents. He was originally trained as an architect but later became a graphic artist, painter, type designer, author and even a teacher. His ideas and designs made a major impact in the way we view and use type today. Even though it is known that Renner was not affiliated with the Bauhaus movement, he fully supported it’s ideas and principles. His greatest accomplishment was the development of the still-popular typeface, Futura.
When Renner designed Futura, he wanted to create a typeface that could successfully combine a Roman and Gothic typeface . His use of geometric shapes in this typeface were not like many other fonts designed in the 1920’s. The typeface became very popular and is still used today very frequently. One of his books he wrote , titled ‘Kulturbolschewismus’, took a direct, public stand against the Nazi movement which eventually got him internally exiled from Hannover, Germany.
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Russian
Russian Constructivism was an art movement that began around 1913 in Russia and lasted only until about 1930. Much like other art movements, it was a radical new approach to looking at graphic design as a whole. The whole idea behind constructivism was to get rid of the idea of compostion in art and get more into the construction side of it. They were more interested in the materials and how they could be used together rather than the art process that had been the same
for many years. These artists were often trying to get the elements of their art piece down to the raw materials. Not only does this create a unique new way to create art, it more importantly created a sense of hierarchy and order, everything that the Russian society was about. They really wanted to make the move from the artist’s studio to the factory and help out Russia’s communist society more than just making pretty art. They wholeheartedly wanted to make a difference
The idea of using these materials in a different way than they normally would have been is one that not many people prior to this movement had tried. The typical artist would take the form and choose materials accordingly, the Russian Constructivists took the materials and then dictated what the form would be according to that. These constructivists wanted to use this art style as a way of making a difference in their society. They
Constructivism
believed that they could use this industrial approach to art and make as much difference as a scientist could. Although the Constructivist movement did not necessarilly last very long, it sparked ideas for future movements like Productivism, in which artists would work mostly in industry.
Left: Alexander Rodchenko, Books, 1924 (41) Right:El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919 (42)
Alexey Brodovitch
Alexey Brodovitch was a very crucial figure in the development of graphic design throughout the world in his time. He is known for changing the way graphic design was seen because he radically simplified the typography and overall layout of the pages. His new ideas about photography also changed the way society thought about photos in the 1950’s. His photogrpahy techinques became the staple idea of magazines. People most likely know him best for his magazine designs for Harper’s Bazaar. His radical new designs and page layouts really set the tone for other magaine designers of his time.
Not only did he create intriguing magazine covers and layouts, but he also spent a lot of his time trying to get the word out about new and upcoming artists, something that the majority of aritsts would not do, even in today’s day and age. Several new artists and photographers actually worked for him and in turn that helped spread the ideas of his designs. He did other forms of art aside from photography and magazine design. In 1924 he designed a poster for an artists ball that won first prize. He also won a prize for his fabric and jewelry display in 1925.
Brodovitch came to America in 1930 and ended up starting the Philadelphia College of Art, which was originally intended to be an advertising agency. His students were exposed first-hand to his European style of design. Shortly after he started the Philadelphia College of Art, his designs were noticed by Carmel Snow who was the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, and she immediately hired him as the new art director. Brodovitch’s ideals made him one of the pioneers of bringing modernist ideas to America.
Left: Alexey Brodovitch, The Consensus of Opinion Article in Harper’s Bazaar, 1936 (43) Right: Alexey Brodovitch, Harper’s Bazaar Cover, 1940 (44)
Bibliography Johanna Drucker and Emily McVarish, Graphic Design History, A Critical Guide Second Edition. Pearson, 2009. Print This book gives an accurate over view in the history of graphic design, typography, and tools available at the time. It’s clear layouts in the chapters and uses of hierarchy help the reader in understanding the information. The timeline at the end of the chapters where helpful in telling what was going on in the world such as war, pop culture, and new technology. This book was a large help in my articles because it was full of lots of information and is parallel to other facts I have read in other books. It also acted as a double checker for images found on the Internet. For example, if I found an image online regarding Herbert Bayer, I would look in the book to see if that same image was used in the same context. Steven Heller & Elinor Pettit, Graphic Design TimeLine, A Century of Design Milestones. Allworth Press, New York. 2000. Print. The book discusses more than just what was going on in the graphic design world but also in the advertising world, architecture world, world of politics, and the births and deaths of important people. The book was helpful in that manner because it helps introduce the inspiration artist’s may have been given in order to make their work. It was also helpful regarding the accuracy of dates that the timeline wasn’t given in an overview of the decade but was an over view of a year. The pictures in the book built onto the content of what was going on during certain times. Herbert Spencer, Pioneers of Modern Typography. The MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1969. Print. This book by Herbert is the guide to the history and development of typography. It is full of informative text and clear images of typography used on posters and magazines at that time. The book goes into the deep roots of big movements such as Avant-Garde, Futurist, Dadaism, de Stijl, Suprematism, Constructivism, and the Bauhaus. He describes who he thinks are “Pioneers” of modern type such as El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. The book was revised in 1983 by Rick Poyner which he discusses the important contributions to the history of graphic arts. Overall, this book is a good blend between the written history descriptions of type and the images that show the history of type. David Crow, Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts, Second Edition. AVA Publishing SA, Switzerland. 2003. Print. This reading showcases the graphic design work of well-known artist and upcoming artist. To describe the meaning behind the work there are interviews of the artist and how it has been received by others. Full of clean layouts and wise use of the colors the book is a good example of book design and goes easy on the eyes. At the end of each chapter is a section full of artists’ portfolios which acts as a plug for the artist, gives inspiration to others, and shows what kind of work would have been made during certain times. This book is a great starting point for up and coming graphic designers because it makes them think about the fundamentals of design, consumers, and readers. Denise Gonzales Crisp, Graphic Design in Context, Typography. Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. 2012. Print. The book is full of emphasizes the importance of text in a system of an audience, technology, and mediums. The book makes the reader think critically about the role typography plays into the world in encoding, decoding, messages, and rules to follow in design. The book is very education in what makes good design such as how much white space should be used, grid systems, and rule of hierarchy. The book doesn’t start in the digital age but goes back in time with Gutenberg and beyond when digital tools where not around. Overall, the book gives a critical analysis of what makes good typography and uses examples from bits and pieces of history. Rob Carter, Philip B. Meggs, Ben Day, Sandra Maxa, and Mark Sanders, Typographic design: Form and Communication, Sixth Edition. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. 2015. Print. Typographic Design deals with the priories of designing with typography such as stroke weight, legibility, and structure. The text also gives history lessons in the evolution of typography such as the creation of new fonts and the context they may have been used in. The images used in the book helps the reader in giving visual examples that may be in their life. The book is also helpful by describing technology that a designer may have used to further their work in style and how it affected the budget of a designer. This is another book that should
be in the collection of a graphic designer because it is a great dedication to the evaluation of fonts and what physically makes the font special such as its weight, baseline, and sharpness. Steve Heller, Art of Humor in Design. Watson Guptill, 1991. Print. This book gave great insight into images of contemporary design and also design of the past. The article about Swiss style was helpful in that it gave crucial information to Paul Renner and other Swiss designers. It goes over the repetition aspect of the Swiss ideas and how it influenced type and design. Janssen, Hans and MIchael White, The Story of De Stijl. New York: Abrams Books, 2001. Print. Hans Janssen’s book is a facinating survey that unravels what De Stijl was and is. It also considers the theory of De Stijl and how it matches its actual practive. De Stijl was a magazine, art movemnt, and idea, a world view, and an approach to life. From the 30s and on, De Stijl was recognized internationally as the most imprtant contricution to modern culture originating from the Netherlands. Steven Eskilson, Graphic Design: A New History. Laurence King Publishing, 2007. Print This book contains a very interesting article about Paul Renner and his design of Futura. It goes over his thoughts on how he thought this type should look and how it changed from the first prototypes. His ideas about type and design together are clearly shown and it gives good insight into how Futura is/was used. Editors of Encyclopaedis Britannica, Theo van Doesburg. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Print. This article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives insight to the life of Theo van Doesburg. It explains his intentions of being an artist and his turning point in his career. His turning point start when he started promoting the idea of De Stijl in Germany and France. He eventually returned to painter later in his career. He was the publisher of a manifesto explaining De Stijl, but later joined a groupd of artists who advocated pur abstraction. de Jong, Cees W., Master Typographer: His Life, Work and Legacy. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008. Print. This book by Cees W. de Jong is the most complete study ever of the major figure of Jan Tschichold in modern graphic arts. Only few have left a deeper impression on the world of typography than Jan Tschichold. He is considered one of the most influencial and outstanding designers of the early twentieth century. It explains not only his mastery skill in his field, but also his numerous books and typefaces. This volume places Tschichold’s vision in the historical and cultural context of his era. It starts with an overview of Tschichold’s life. Later on it discussing his major influence and innovations, his work with Penguin Books, and classical typography. Kramer, Katie, Piet Zwart. N/A. Print. This book by Katie Kramer is a collection of some of Piet Zwart’s most interesting and groundbreaking designs. Zwart’s world renowned typographical work and is still recognized as some of the most forward thinking and innovative typography to date. Breaking the rules of traditional typography Zwart created an approach that shpaed the way modern type would be used. A trained architect, Zwart discovered and mastered typography on his own. Combining these two art forms, Zwart’s distinct style emerged in the 1920s. Steven Heller, Graphic Design History. Alworth Press, 2001. Print. Steve Heller’s Graphic Design History is an excellent source of graphic design history. In this book, there was a lot of great information on Alexey Brodovitch and his influences in the design world. Also, the integration of advertising with design is covered extensively in it’s idea that the two are intertwined and good design is mostly involved with advertising. Steven Heller, Graphic Style from Victorian to New Century. Abrams Publishing, 2011. Print. This book was an excellent source of images and overall design style and how it changed over the years since it’s beginning. The article about streamline, futurist style was extremely helpful in the information on Alexey Brodovitch. It goes over the new, streamline approach to the Futurist style and how Brodovitch and several other Futurists utilized it in design. Art Directory, Vilmos Huszar. N/A. Web. Art Directory gives a brief summary of Vilmos Huszar. There is not much information about Huszar, but Art Directory explains in detail of his life and experience as a designer. This article was used to give a small summary about Huszar in this booklet. His experience as a painter helped him gain his style in interior design and furniture and textiles. He was a member of De Stijl and tied to the movement for a short period of time before returning to painting. The Art Story Foundation, De Stijl. New York: The Art Story Foundation, 2015. Web. The Art Story Foundation’s article gives a descriptive synopsis of the De Stijl Movement. It highlights key ideas focusing on the style, pioneering exponents, and the enbodyment of the movement. Even though Piet
Mondrian wasn’t mentioned in this booklet, he was the main artist of the time. His art is the most important aspect of the movement. The beginnings described in the article outline a few artists including Theo van Doesburg and Vilmos Huszar. Adopting the visual elements of Cubism and Suprematism, the anti-sentimetalism of Dada, and the Neo-Platonic mathematical theory are central to the movement. Concepts and styles included are pure geometric abstraction and the De Stijl visual language, Neo-Plasticism, and Elementarism. Finally the later developments in De Stijl-inspired architecture were outlined. John J Heartfield Exhibition, Heartfield’s Art: A Perspective. N/A: EarthPlaza, 2011-15. Web. This source is an online exhibition for the work of John Heartfield. There are many sections to this exhibition. Periodicals is an exapnding part of Heartfield’s montages for magazines such as the AIZ, Der KNuppel, and Die Rote Fahne. Book Graphics pioneer graphic designs of Hearfield. Posters of his are displayed that used to be plastered throughout the streets of Berlin targeting assassination by the Nazis. Brochures graced the covers of propaganda posters against fascist dicators. Heartfield also studied theater design setting up stage sets, production designs, projections, costume designs, and mechanics for the theater. Biography.com Editors, Le Corbusier Biography. A&E Television Netwroks. 2015. Web. The article posted on the website is a felt heart dedication to the departed Le Corbusier or his given name Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris. It starts off with how most bios start off which is talking about their early life. Charles had art in his blood because his parents were artists too. His father painted dials in the town’s renowned watch industry and his mother was a musician and a piano teacher. The story then discusses the age where Le Corbusier trains to be an artist at the age of 13. The article was helpful in understanding why Le had so many artistic skills such as painting, architecture, music, and graphic design. designishistory.com, Herbert Bayer. N/A. N/A. Web. DESIGN IS HISTORY is a great source for images and for informative text. Some of the articles are short but still give a good idea of what was happening at certain times and what artists were doing. The page about Herbert Bayer has three large and colorful images of his architecture and catalogue work. The text comes out saying that Bayer had a large impact on the Bauhaus school. He was both a student and a teacher at the school plus worked on not just design but painting, typography, architecture, advertising, and sculpting. While he was teaching at Bauhaus he was also working as an Art Director for the Container Corporation and Art Director of Vogue magazine’s Berlin Office. designishistory.com, The Arts and Crafts Movement. N/A. N/A. Web. This site is full of so much information about graphic designers and movements starting from the 1450s to the 2000s. It is also full of clear, good quality images. Some of the articles are short including the one about the Arts and Crafts Movement. However, it still showcases a good introduction into what the movement stands for and who is in it such as William Morris. It begins by stating the movement originated in Britain during the late 19th century and was characterized by a style of decoration reminiscent of medieval times. William Morris had a big role in the Arts and Crafts movement by founding Morris, Marshall, and Faulker & Co. designishistory.com, The Bauhaus. N/A. N/A. Web. The text gives a great introduction into the Bauhaus school and what it stands for. The school was the result for a need for change in the art world. The school favored simplified forms, rationality, functionality and the idea that mass production could live in harmony with the artistic spirit of individuality. Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany founded the school in 1919. It was forced to move to Dessau in 1924 then forced to close its doors in 1933 due to the Nazi party. During its early years many well-known artists taught there such as Herbert Bayer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. en.wikipedia.org, William Morris. Wikipedia. 2015. Web Wikipedia maybe a site with mixed reviews but it is still informative and gives a general idea of the story behind William Morris and movements that influenced him or where influenced by him. The page talks about William’s early life, his career and fame, aspects of his personal life, and how his work is still impacting the art work today especially in fashion. There is mention of how he is remembered after his death in 1896. The Morris family has a tombstone at Kelmscott and there is a plaque on the outside of the Red House which he and his wife lived in. There are also great images that show case Mr. Morris’ physical features and examples of his work such as wallpaper designs, “Tulip and Willow” wood-block print on fabric, and stained glass. linotype.com, Font Designer - Edward Johnston. Monotype GmbH. 2015. Web The LinotYpE website is a source full of fonts, designers, and tools of typography. The site is easy to navigate and the text is easy to read. The layout of the articles is like a timeline in the form of a paragraph instead of a chart or a long line with facts and numbers coming out of it. The article beings by telling the year Edward Johnston was born which is 1872, and then when he died in1944. The page does state an over view of
his carrier in one year and does it in chronological order. His art carrier does not begin till 1899 when he teaches at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in the new lettering department. What he would be most well known for was in 1916 when Mr. Johnston produces a typeface for the London Underground’s corporate identity.
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Abie Rohde | Megan Rook | Kyle Shemek