frameworks
introduction In this booklet you’ll learn the brief history of design through fonts like Akzidenz-Grotesk, the Swiss Design movement, the designer Max Bill, and the program Photoshop and what all those things share and how they all changed the world of graphic design.
INDEX
PAGES
akzidenz-grotesk
3
swiss design
7
max bill
11
photoshop
15
4 akzidenz grotesk
1900 - 1929
Akzidenz-Grotesk
was one of the first wellknown sans serif font. It was based on Royal Grotesk light, and created by the Berthold Type Foundry in Berlin during the latter half of the 19th century. The Berthold Type foundry was one of
“I only accept functional typefaces. The one you are reading right now is the one I preferred for 60 years now. It is Akzidenz-Grotesk.”
sans serif font. The font itself would go on to influence many type designers. It was popular especially in Switzerland, and also Berlin where the font became commonplace in Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences for scientific publications because of its legibility. Berthold initially named this font Accidenz-Grotesk. In 1908 Berthold took over Theinhardt’s Berlin Foundry and renamed the entire font family Akzudenz-Grotesk Condensed. Although some people confuse Helvetica with Akzienz-Grotesk, AkzienzGrotesk can be recognized by its diagonal terminals. There are other defining features, for example the “J” does not go below the baseline, the “Q” doesn’t cross inside the circle, and the middle of the “M” goes to the baseline. In the 1950s a project, directed by Jimmy Lazar, started at Berthold to add to the font family. Under direction of Günter Ger-
hard Lange, they added 33 font styles that included Super Italic, Super, Extra Bold Italic, Extra, Extra Bold, among others. The font is used for the American Red Cross, the Arizona State University brand logo, and in the Nascar Sprint Cup Series.
Campaign posters for the Swiss Automobile Club. “The considerate hand signal protects from accidents” — 1955
swiss design 8
Swiss Design 1930 - 1989 Swiss Design, also known as the International Typographic Style, was created in the 1950’s in Switzerland
It favors legibility and simplicity. It focuses on grids, asymmetrical layouts, sans serif fonts, and aligned text.
Instead of using illustrations it favors photography. It’s attention to detail, craftsmanship, and printing to create a well thought out grid style layout.
Starting out with mostly posters and brochures, it’s made its own impact on web design.
Even though some people say it started in Russia, Germany, and the Netherlands in the ‘20s.
Designers are supposed to be communicators, not artists. It was more important to accomplish order and not personal expression.
According to Smashing Magazine, “Minimal design is about removing the unnecessary and emphasizing the necessary; it’s about a functional and simple use of fundamental elements of style for the purpose of the artists’ objectives.”
The International Typographic Style There were two schools that are credited for this style and that was Zurich School of Arts and Krafts and Basel School of Design
Developed by designers such as Josef Müller Brockmann, Max Bill, Armin Hofmann, who began playing with typography in a cold, anonymous, emotionless way.
Josef Müller Brockmann published a journal Neue Grafik, and introduced it to America. It found great success in logos and branding here in the United States.
12 max bill
1960 - 1989
Max Bill, was a paint-
er, an architect, and most importantly a designer. Born in 1908 in Winterthur, Switzerland. Beginning his studies in Germany at the Bauhaus. In 1944 he started teaching as a professor in Zurich in the school of arts. He went on to form the Ulm School of Design or with Otl Aicher in 1950, a school created in Bauhaus tradition. The school closed in 1968. In 1964 he was the head architect of “Bilden und Gestalten” at the Swiss national exhibition in Lausanne. He started teaching in Hamburg
and became involved in politics and was elected to the Zurich municipal council. He later died at 85 from a heart attack. His style was Swiss style. “Bill is widely considered the single most decisive influence on Swiss graphic design beginning in the 1950s with
his theoretical writing and progressive work” Swiss Graphic Design, The Origins and Growth of an International Style, 1920-1965 said it best. His style pertaining to sans serif typography, grids, asymmetric compositions, mathematical progressions, and figure-ground relationships was a true definition of the Swiss style.
14 photoshop
1990 - 2015
Lets backtrack to 1987 when a
PhD student Tom Knoll created something that changed the design world. He wrote an application that would display grayscale images on a monochrome display. John, Tom’s brother, saw the application and then persuaded Tom into making it into a whole image editing software. While on search for investors there was only one interested, that’s when Adobe bought the
software. On February 1, 1990 Photoshop was released for Mac at the price of $300 and included digital color editing and retouching. Version 2.0 came out that June.The next release included a program for Windows. The third version included the most important part of Photoshop, layers. It has led to a change in advertising, it brought more tools to create content for marketing, social media, and anything is possible with the software. It’s changed the movie industry. Most images we see in
Adobe Photoshop from 1990-2015
the media have been retouched; it’s not what our everyday person looks like. In the design world it’s changed the industry, before it people would rely on pricey machinery and a really experienced staff. It’s brought possible things we never thought were. Tom Knoll even said, “Every time a significant feature gets added to Photoshop, I tend to be surprised that it’s possible.” It has not only changed design, it changWed the world.
Frameworks Issue I December 2015