Swiss International Typography
Swiss International Typography
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Richard Paul Lohse Bauen + Wohnen, no. 4, 1948, journal cover
Introduction
The International Typographic Style, also sometimes referred to as the Swiss Style, is one of the most important graphic design styles to emerge in the twentieth century due to its far reaching impact in design throughout the world. The style began in Switzerland and Germany and had its full emergence in the early 1950’s and remained extremely prominent through the
late 1960’s, and still has a significant impact on design today. Some main qualities that characterize the movement includes the use of an asymmetrical layout built around a mathematically constructed grid, a clear approach to how the content is presented, the use of sans-serif type, and a tendency to prefer photography over illustration.
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Ernst Keller
International Typographic Style spans several decades, and one of the earliest influencers of this style is Ernst Keller. In 1918, Keller began to teach design and typography at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich and taught there until he retired in 1918. While he was there he established several training programs in design and typography and was called the father of Swiss graphics. He created important conditions for a new understanding of text as an expressive means on a poster by freeing it from its subservient function as well as stylizing images as emblems. Jan Tschichold, one of the pioneers of New Typography, advocated the absolute functionality of the text and the rational use of typography. Richard Paul Lohse
and Max Bill, leaders of the Concrete Movement, focused on concentrating form and color in the poster that allowed for an immediate understanding of the message they were attempting to advertise. The clear-cut attitude of these designers was embodied by their progressive approach to graphic design and they not only advanced a new way of seeing, but their messages championed Switzerland as a very open-minded country. The poster was the best medium for these designers to best communicate these ideals to the world.
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Richard Paul Lohse Ungegenstandliche Malerei in der Schweiz, 1958, poster
“ The poster was
the best medium for these designers to best communicate these ideals to the world.“
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Theo Ballmer
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Theo Ballmer also had an important impact on the International Typographic Style. He studied at the Dessau Bauhaus in the late 1920’s and applied De Stijl principles to much of his graphic design work which utilized grids of horizontally and vertically aligned elements. The Bauhaus school’s ultimate aim was to reestablish a unity between applied arts and technology to give design a fresh start after the war. Architecture was an essential part of the school’s philosophy since Walter Gropius, the director of the Bauhaus, believed in encompassed more distinct areas of art and design than any other discipline. The first year of the school focused on the central message of “truth to materials” and taught them how to combine ideas from multiple disciplines to create multidimensional work which shared both visual and physical qualities. Once this first year was completed, students would move on to completing a variety of workshops, including wood and metal work, ceramics and weaving, and graphic design. The early graphic design style of Bauhaus was largely influenced by De Stijl, which was founded in The Netherlands in 1917. Its philosophy fused aspects of Cubism and Futurism with a very pure aesthetic built around strong vertical and horizontal stresses. Though this movement didn’t necessarily receive the attention that these artists wanted and the art style remained mainly Dutch, this style did have a lot of influence in the graphic design world.
Theo Ballmer Militarvorlage Nein!, 1935, poster
Bauhaus’s new photography program. After the summer of 1930 he returned back home and applied the notes he took from photography and applied it to his design practices. He used photography to document his work, especially his posters, and used images in his advertisements. He also used photography to document his homeland. In 1936, Ballmer created a photographic poster for the Swiss Tourist Board. Ballmer’s poster is comprised of several negatives, but printed together as a single image. The next few years after this Ballmer created mainly political posters. Since photomontage was expensive for posters, the majority of the posters were illustration. In 1926, Ballmer began working in a large The only poster that used photography was pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. Here called Struggle or Misery, created in 1931. He he used modernist elements like flat areas of reinforces the meaning of the Soviet handle color and a geometrical lettering drawn on and sickle by reconnecting the abstract syma grid and became part of his personal style. bol to everyday meaning. In 1928 Ballmer enrolled as a student in the
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“ Design that emerges from
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its own resources and rules, without deriving or borrowing them from external natural phenomena, and which is based on optical design and thus on color, form, space, light, movement.
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Max Bill
Max Bill was another strong influencer of this new style and was also a student of the Bauhaus during the years 1927-1929. While there he was taught by Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Wassily Kandinsky, and he developed a style he called art concret. This style involved the creation of a universal style based on mathematical principles. He defined this style as “…design that emerges from its own resources and rules, without deriving or borrowing them from external natural phenomena, and which is based on optical design and thus on color, form, space, light, movement.”
The bulk of his work is characterized by layouts where elements were precisely distributed and spaced, and he also favored sans serif type faces, like Akzidenz-Grotesk. Later in life he was the co-founder of the Ulm School of Arts and Crafts and he served as the head of architecture and product design during the 1950’s. Some of his best known work from this time are his chronoscopes (wrist watches), and they are still being sold today by the Junghans company in Germany. |9|
Max Bill Moderne Schweizer Architektur/ Modern Swiss Architecture, 1925-1945
Josef Muuler-Brockmann Schindler Speedwalk Rollteppich, ca. 1962, prospectus
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Josef Müller-Brockmann
The International Typographic Style’s dominance throughout the 1950’s is largely credited to Josef Müller-Brockmann, whose body of work is synonymous with this period. He studied under Ernst Keller in 1932-1934 and then opened up his own studio in 1936. He had a variety of art styles influence his work, including Constructivism, De Stijl, Suprematism, and the teachings of the Bauhaus. Müller-Brockmann was able to filter aspects of each of these to create his very own highly representational version of the style. Some of his best known work was commissioned by Zurich Town Hall from 1952 and beyond. He first created a series of concert posters and devised an abstract visual method to represent the music using mathematically harmonious compositions.
A second significant series of posters he designed was for the Swiss Automobile Club related to their concerns about the increasing number of vehicles on roads, and the different problems that arose from that. One poster in particular that he created in 1953 about the potential danger to children due to vehicles stands out as one of his best pieces. He also published several books, including The Graphic Artist and His Problems and Grid Systems in Graphic Design, and they provide an in-depth look at his work practices and philosophies.
Jodef Muller-Brockmann Schutzt das Kind!, 1953, poster
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“individual” vs “anonymous”
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This new Swiss style quickly began spreading throughout the world in the 1950’s and designers and many other countries began to be interested in learning more about this work. Several British designers went to Switzerland to see it firsthand. Richard Hollis, a British designer starting his career in the late fifties was one of the people who went to Switzerland. He met with Müller-Brockmann and was shown around the school that he was currently teaching at. He recounts that the school’s graphic design department was taught by a strict teaching staff wearing white coats, which was very much in contrast with the style in an English art school, which had a more Bohemian feel. While there Müller-Brockmann held an inaugural exhibition at the Kunstgewerbemuseum. The title Konstruktive Grafik defined a designer who “works from functional principles similar to those of modern architects, princi-
ples that are not in fact formalist, but constructive.” Designers then began to be defined as two groups: the “individual” and the “anonymous”. The “individual” were the designers that stayed true to tradition, both literary and illustrative. The “anonymous” were those with apparently “constructive” tendencies. As well as having a tendency for photography, they also typically used an unjustified typesetting, which was a striking aspect of their work. In 1958, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Hans Neuburg, Carlo Vivarelli and Paul Lohse joined together and created Neue Grafik, a trilingual quarterly magazine described as an “International Review of graphic design and related subjects.” The publication was designed on a strict grid, all in grotesque and represented the core of “constructivism” as it had been developed in Zurich. The first editorial stated”[the editors] do not prize modernity for its own sake or applaud boldness and originality at all costs, but they value the attempt at a solution by constructive methods, not an illusory solution based on emotional representational effects… the four editors pledge themselves to uphold the policy of reproducing only work which is absolutely contemporary in style.”
Carlo Vivarelli, Hans Neuburg, Josef Muller-Brockmann, Richard Paul Lohse Neue Grafik, 1958, title page
Hans Neuburg Konstruktive Grafik, 1958, poster
Carlo Vivarelli Futurama/ General Motors Ausstellung, 1956, poster
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Josef Muller-Brockmann Turmac cigarette advertisement, ca. 1955
Hans Neuburg Zurcher Kunstler in der Kunsthalle Basel, 1966, poster
There had been tension between the “indi- Neuburg believed that there was an unbridgevidual” and the “anonymous” designer since able gap between these two practices, and he the 1930’s and was of extreme interest to Hans leaned much more in the direction of the “conNeuburg. Designers were picking sides, and structivist” style. He defended its three most several even switched sides between the two striking features: first, the nearly exclusive use approaches to graphic design throughout the of sans-serif type faces, which he said was “not years. In the early 1960’s Neuburg was on the for the sake of uniformity or as a n element of committee of a new organization, the icogra- style, but because they prefer an anonymous da (International Council of Graphic Design type.” Second, since this new style originated Associations), and he proposed they should in Neuburg’s concept of “Industrie-Graphik”, hold a conference to see what people had to he claimed that photography was the only say about this “new” graphic design. A con- medium that should be used for images. And ference was arranged for the summer of 1964 third, “in addition to photography, graphic dein Zurich, and it was titled “Commercial Artist signers have introduced the grid system, not as or Graphic Designer?” In his keynote speech, a sort of game to simplify their work, as is often Neuburg addressed the two types of creative supposed, but to allow them to use geometry in the profession: the designers with an inclina- in the spatial organization of their designs.” tion to drawing and painting, or illustration; or their counterpart, the “constructivist, functionally-minded and intellectual” designer. This second group were those who were practicing “new” design.
Karl Gerstner, Markus Kutter Die Neue Graphik, 1959, book slipcase
Hans Neuburg Moderne Werbe - Und Gebrauchsgrafik, 1960, book cover
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Univers
This art style is also credited with creating two of the most famous typefaces from the 1950’s: Univers and Helvetica. Adrian Frutiger, a Swiss type designer, finished design work for a new sans-serif font named Univers in 1954. Frutiger had a distaste for only geometric designs, and found them too rigid. While studying in school in Zurich he began to sketch a revived grotesque typeface with a combination of thin and thick strokes in order to avoid perfect geometry This typeface is arguably the first megafamily typeface since it is comprised of 21 different weights. Each variation and width is identified by a number rather than names. It took Frutiger three years to create all the weights and have them as a commercially available set. | 16 |
Bruno Pfaffli Adrian Frutiger, Univers, scheme with 21 weights, 1957
“constructivist,
functionally-minded and intellectual “ It was released by the French foundry Deberny and Peignot in 1957 and became very popular for Swiss-style typographers. Some characteristics of this typeface compared to other like Helvetica and Akzidenz-Grotesk are the tail of the ‘a’ and the ‘1’ are much less rounded than the others. The uppercase ‘G’ is formed without the spur. Also the majority of the numbers in Univers have straight vs. curved ascenders. Frutiger commented himself that “Helvetica is the jeans, Univers is the dinner jacket.” Others have also commented that Univers is better proportioned for text than Helvetica due to the difference in x-height. Univers was originally created to take advantage of the new technology called phototypesetting, in which fonts were stored as glass discs instead of being solid metal matrices for every size to be used.
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Hans, Neuburg, Nelly Rudin Helvetica/ Neue Hans Grotesk, 1963, type specimen
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Helvetica In 1957, Eduard Hoffmann decided that Akzidenz Grotesk needed an upgrade. He was the director of the HAAS Type Foundry in Switzerland at the time. He worked with Max Miedinger, a typeface designer, to create a new sans-serif typeface and named it Neue Haas Grotesk. A few years later, in 1960, the font was released by German foundry D. Stempel AG, and was renamed Helvetica. This typeface went on to become the most popular sans-serif in the world. Some important characteristics of this typeface is its tall x-height, tight spac-
ing between letters, an oblique rather than italic style, tight apertures, and a rounded off tail on the ‘R’. Helvetica’s success has been seen all over the world, and there are versions of the typeface in over ten languages. It has been widely used by the United States Government, and NASA uses the typeface on the Space Shuttle orbiter. The New York Subway System also uses this font for its signage.
Eduard Hoffman, Max A. Meidinger Eduard Hoffmann’s Helvetica logbook on the genesis of Neue Haas Grotesk and later Helvetica, Nov. 1956 - July 1965, cover and double page spreads
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Conclusion
The International Typographic Style, or the Swiss Style was one of the most important art movements of the twentieth century and spans across several decades, and it still plays a strong role in design today. It placed a strong emphasis on taking systemic and mathematical approach to design and completely revolutionized the way graphic designers approached design and layout. It introduced using a grid, sans-serif typefaces and an emphasis on pho-
tography instead of illustration, giving design and clear, straightforward approach that had yet to be explored until the early twentieth century. Much of this art movement is credited to Ernst Keller, Max Bill, Josef MĂźller-Brockmann, and Hans Neuburg, whose individual styles created from pieces of other art movements shaped how this art movement evolved and their work has influenced graphic designers for decades and continues to shape design today.
Leaders of Swiss Typography:
Ernst Keller Theo Ball Max Bill Josef Müller-Brockmann Hans Neuburg
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Bibliography Brändle Christian, et al. 100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design. Lars Müller, 2015. Matthews, William. “Ernst Keller.” History of Graphic Design, www. historygraphicdesign.com/the-age-of-information/the-international-typographic-style/805-ernst-keller. “Max Bill.” Claudio Bravo Biography – Claudio Bravo on Artnet, Pace Gallery, www.artnet.com/artists/max-bill/. Seddon, Tony. Twentieth Century Design: a Decade-by-Decade Exploration of Graphic Style. PRINT, 2014.