Chapter 16

Question 1

The Bauhaus

Answer 1

A school of art, design, and craft that sought a new unity among artists and craftsmen for building a utopian spiritual society for the future. Stained glass, wood, and metal workshops were each taught by an artist and a craftsman and were organized along medieval Bauhuttelines (master, journeymen, and apprentice)

Question 2

“Bauhaus Manifesto”

Answer 2

Written by Walter Gropius and published in German newspapers, this document established the philosophy of the new school: that the complete building is the ultimate aim of all the visual arts, and that proficiency in craft was the prime source of inspiration. Recognizing the common roots of both the fine and applied visual arts, Gropius sought a new unity of art and technology as he enlisted a generation of artists in a struggle to solve problems of visual design created by industrialism.

Question 3

Utopia

Answer 3

A perfectly harmonious society, such as the one Walter Gropius tried to create in the Bauhaus.

Question 4

Typophoto

Answer 4

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s name for an objective integration of word and image to communicate a message with immediacy. He deemed it “the new visual literature.”

Question 5

Photoplastics

Answer 5

Moholy-Nagy’s name for his photomontage work. He saw these not just as the result of a collage technique but as manifestations of a process for arriving at a new expression that could become both more creative and more functional than straightforward imitative photography. Photoplastics could be humorous, visionary, moving, or insightful, and usually had drawn additions, complex associations, and unexpected juxtapositions

Question 6

die neue Typographie

Answer 6

• “the new typography”
• Developed by Jan Tschichold because he was disgusted with “degenerate typefaces and arrangements,” this new stripped typography of unessential elements. Sans-serif type reduced the alphabet to its basic, elementary shapes. Designs were based on an underlying horizontal and vertical structure. Spatial intervals were seen as important design elements, with the white space given a new role as a structural component. Rules, bars, and boxes were often used for structure, balance, and emphasis. Tschichold’s objective was functional design by the most straightforward means. He declared the aim of every typographic work to be the delivery of a message in the shortest, most efficient manner. He emphasized the nature of machine composition and its impact on the design process and product

Question 7

Gill Sans typeface series

Answer 7

designed by Eric Gill (1882-1940) and inspired by an earlier sans serif, Johnston’s Type. This type family, which eventually included fourteen styles, does not have an extremely mechanical appearance because its proportions stem from the Roman tradition

Question 8

Kabel Typeface

Answer 8

a very popular geometric sans-serif typeface enlivened by unexpected design subtleties, designed by the mystical medievalist Rudolf Kock

Question 9

futura typeface

Answer 9

designed by Paul Renner (1878-1956) for the Bauer foundry in Germany. Futura had fifteen alphabets, including four italics and two unusual display fonts, and became the most widely used geometric sans-serif family

Question 10

Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education)

Answer 10

Originally called Vienna Method, a system of using elementary pictographs to convey information, originated by Vienna sociologist Otto Neurath in the 1920s. He felt that the social and economic changed following WW1 demanded clear communication to assist public understanding of important social issues relating to housing, health, and economics. A system of elementary pictographs to present complex data, particularly statistical data, was developed. Neurath’s charts were completely functional and shorn of decorative qualities

Question 11

typotekt

Answer 11

This play on words, which expresses designer Piet Zwart’s position as an architect who had become a typographic designer, has a deeper meaning, for it also expresses the working process of the new typography. The way that Zwart (as well as El Lissitzky, Herbert Bayer, and Jan Tschicold) constructed a design from the material of the type case is analogous to the manner in which an architect’s design is constructed from glass, steel, and concrete.

Question 12

Experimenta typographica

Answer 12

Willem Sandberg’s series of probing typographic experiments in form and space published in the mid 1950s. Sandberg was an explorer; his text settings were often completely unjustified, and sentence fragments were arranged freely on the page, with ultra bold or delicate script introduced for accent or emphasis. He rejected symmetry and liked bright primary colors and strong contrasts, as well as muted hues and subtle juxtapositions. He combined crisp, sans-serif type with large torn-paper collage letterforms with rough edges

Question 13

Graphis

Answer 13

A bimonthly international graphic design magazine launched by Walter Herdeg during WW2. For 42 years and 246 issues, he published, edited, and designed this publication, which sparked an unprecedented dialogue among graphic designers throughout the world

Question 14

Walter Gropius

Answer 14

• 1883-1969
• founder of the Bauhaus school, who, recognizing the common roots of both the fine and applied visual arts, sought a new unity of art and technology. He enlisted a generation of artists in a struggle to solve problems of visual design created by industrialism. It was hoped that the artistically trained designer could “breathe a soul into the dead product of the machine,” for Gropius believed that only the most brilliant ideas were good enough to justify multiplication by industry.

Question 15

Johannes Itten

Answer 15

• 1888-1967
• developer of the heart of Bauhaus education, the preliminary course, the goals of which were to release each student’s creative abilities, to develop an understanding of the physical nature of materials, and to teach the fundamental principles of design underlying all visual art. With his methodology of direct experience, he sought to develop perceptual awareness, intellectual abilities, and emotional experience. In 1923, Itten left the Bauhaus because of disagreements about the conduct of this course.

Question 16

Lyonel Feininger

Answer 16

• 1871-1956
• Bauhaus teacher who learned about De Stijl and introduced it to the Bauhaus community in the spring of 1919.

Question 17

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Answer 17

• 1894-1946
• Johannes Itten’s replacement as the head of the preliminary course was this Hungarian constructivist. A restless experimenter who studied law before turning to art, Moholy-Nagy explored painting, photography, film, sculpture, and graphic design. New materials such as acrylic resin and plastic, new techniques such as photomontage and the photogram, and visual means including kinetic motion, light, and transparency were encompassed in his wide-ranging investigations. Young and articulate, Moholy-Nagy had a marked influence on the evolution of Bauhaus instruction and philosophy, and he became Gropius’s “prime minister” at the Bauhaus as the director pushed for a new unity of art and technology.

Question 18

Gyorgy Kepes

Answer 18

• 1906-2002
• Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s assistant in completing the execution of his commissions beginning in 1929. Later he founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an association designed to promote creative collaboration between artists and scientists.

Question 19

Joseph Albers

Answer 19

• 1887-1976
• A Bauhaus master and former student, he taught a systematic preliminary course investigating the constructive qualities of materials.

Question 20

Marcel Breuer

Answer 20

• 1902-81
• The head of the furniture design workshop at the Bauhaus, he invented tubular-steel furniture.

Question 21

Herbert Bayer

Answer 21

-1900-85
- a former Bauhaus student who became a teacher of typography and graphic design there. His workshop made striking typographic design innovations along functional and constructivist lines. Sans-serif fonts were used almost exclusively, and Bayer designed a universal type that reduced the alphabet to clear, simple, and rationally constructed forms (Fig. 16–20). This was consistent with Gropius’s advocacy of form following function. Bayer omitted capital letters, arguing that two alphabets (uppercase and lowercase) were incompatible in design, and two totally different signs (e.g., capital Aand small a) expressed the same spoken sound. Dynamic composition with strong horizontals and verticals (and, on occasion, diagonals) characterize Bayer’s Bauhaus period.

Question 22

Joost Schmidt

Answer 22

• 1893-1948
• Herbert Bayer’s successor as master of typography and graphic design at the Bauhaus. He moved away from strict constructivist ideas and stocked the workshop with a larger variety of type fonts. Exhibition design (Fig. 16–23) was outstanding under Schmidt, who brought unity to this form through standardized panels and grid-system organization.

Question 23

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Answer 23

• 1886-1969
• a prominent Berlin architect who became director of the Bauhaus school in 1930 after harassment from municipal authorities in Dessau. His design dictum “less is more” became a major tenet of twentieth-century design. In 1931, the Nazi party dominated the Dessau City Council; it canceled Bauhaus faculty contracts in 1932. Mies van der Rohe tried to run the Bauhaus from an empty telephone factory in Berlin-Steglitz, but Nazi harassment made continuing untenable.

Question 24

Jan Tschichold

Answer 24

• 1902-74
• applied the new Bauhaus design approaches to everyday design problems and explained them to a wide audience of printers, typesetters, and designers in his 1928 book Die neue Typographie (The New Typography). His objective was functional design by the most straightforward means. Tschichold declared the aim of every typographic work to be the delivery of a message in the shortest, most efficient manner. Types, he believed, should be elementary in form without embellishment; thus, sans-serif type, in a range of weights (light, medium, bold, and extrabold), proportions (condensed, normal, and expanded), and italic (in similar weights and proportions) was declared to be the modern type. Tschichold showed how the modern-art movement could relate to graphic design by synthesizing his practical understanding of typography and its traditions with the new experiments

Question 25

Eric Gill

Answer 25

• 1882-1940
• a complex and colorful figure who defies categorization in the history of graphic design, but may be best known for designing the Gill Sans type series (Fig. 16–37). His activities encompassed stonemasonry, inscription carving for monuments, sculpture, wood engraving, typeface design, lettering, book design, and extensive writing. He argued that the uneven word spacing of justified lines posed greater legibility and design problems than the use of equal word spacing and a ragged right margin

Question 26

Stanley Morison

Answer 26

• 1889-1967
• The typographic adviser to the British Monotype Corporation and the Cambridge University Press, he supervised the design of a major twentieth-century newspaper and magazine typeface commissioned by the Timesof London in 1931

Question 27

Paul Renner

Answer 27

• 1878-1956
• the designer of the Futura typeface, which had fifteen variations, including four italics and two unusual display faces, and became the most widely used geometric sans-serif family (Fig. 16–39). As a teacher and designer, Renner fought tirelessly for the notion that designers should not merely preserve their inheritance and pass it on to the next generation unchanged; rather, each generation should try to solve inherited problems and attempt to create a contemporary form true to its own time.

Question 28

Rudolf Koch

Answer 28

• a mystical medievalist who designed Kabel, a very popular geometric sans-serif typeface (Fig. 16–40) enlivened by unexpected design subtleties.

Question 29

Otto Neurath

Answer 29

• 1882-1945
• a Vienna sociologist and the originator of the Isotype effort, which involved the use of elementary pictographs to convey information (Fig. 16–42). As a child, he marveled at the way ideas and factual information could be conveyed by visual means. Neurath had ties with the new typography movement, for Tschichold assisted him and his collaborators briefly in the late 1920s, and Renner’s new Futura typeface was adopted for Isotype designs immediately after it became available.

Question 30

Maria Reidermeister

Answer 30

• 1898-1959
• a scientist and mathematician who headed the transformation team of the Iso type project. This team converted verbal and numerical data compiled by statisticians and researchers into layout form before it was refined by a graphic designer.

Question 31

Gerd Arntz

Answer 31

• 1900-88
• : A woodcut artist whose constructivist-inspired prints included archetypal geometric figures, he joined the Isotype group in 1928, after which he designed most of their pictographs

Question 32

Rudolf Modley

Answer 32

• 1906-76
• One of Otto Neurath’s assistants, he came to America during the 1930s and established Pictorial Statistics, Inc., which later became the Pictographic Corporation. This organization became the North American branch of the Isotype movement. Modley believed a symbol should follow principles of good design, be effective in both large and small sizes, have unique characteristics to distinguish it from all other symbols, be interesting, function well as a statistical unit for counting, and work in outline or in silhouette.

Question 33

Henry (Harry) C. Beck

Answer 33

• 1903-74
• draftsman who submitted an unsolicited design proposal for a new subway system map to the London underground that replaced geographic fidelity with a diagrammatic interpretation. The central portion of the map, showing complex interchanges between routes, was enlarged in proportion to outlying areas. Meandering geographic lines were drawn on a grid of horizontals, verticals, and forty-five-degree diagonals, with bright color-coding separating the routes. Beck’s development and revisions of the London Underground maps over twenty-seven years made a significant contribution to the visual presentation of diagrams and networks, for his discoveries inspired many variations worldwide

Question 34

Piet Zwart

Answer 34

• 1885-1977
• This Dutch designer created a synthesis from two apparently contradictory influences: the Dada movement’s playful vitality and De Stijl’s functionalism and formal clarity. Rejecting the dull grayness of conventional typography, he created dynamic and arresting layouts. With no formal training in typography or printing, he was uninhibited by the rules and methods of traditional professional practice. The need for typography to be in harmony with its era and available production methods was an important concern for Zwart. Realizing that twentieth-century mass printing made typographic design an important and influential cultural force, he had a strong sense of social responsibility and concern for the reader. He recognized that twentieth-century citizens were inundated with communications and could not afford the luxury of wading through masses of reading matter. Brief slogans with large letters in bold type and diagonal lines were used to attract the reader’s attention (Fig. 16–49), who could then quickly grasp the main idea or content. Explanatory matter was organized to make it easy to isolate essential information from secondary material.

Question 35

Hendrik N. Werkman

Answer 35

• 1882-1945
• a Dutch artist noted for experimentation with type, ink, and ink rollers for purely artistic expression in monoprints, which he referred to as druksels (prints). In September 1923, he began publication of the Next Call,a small magazine of typographic experiments and texts. His process of building a design from ready-made components can be compared to the creative process of the Dadaists, particularly in collage. Werkman explored type as concrete visual form as well as alphabetic communication. A few days before the city of Groningen was liberated by the Canadian army in April 1945, Werkman was executed by the Nazis. After his arrest, much of his work was confiscated and taken to the headquarters of the Security Police and was destroyed when the building burned during the fighting.

Question 36

Paul Schuitema

Answer 36

An important Dutch graphic constructivist designer, he made significant use of overprinting and organized his space with rigorous horizontal, vertical, and diagonal movements. Objective photography was integrated with typography as part of a total structure (Fig. 16–54). For thirty years, Schuitema taught at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Fine Arts) in The Hague, where he inspired several generations of designers.

Question 37

Willem Sandberg

Answer 37

• 1897-1984
• The director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 1945 until 1963, he emerged as a highly original practitioner of the new typography after World War II. During the war, while hiding and working for the Resistance, he created his Experimenta typographica, a series of probing typographic experiments in form and space that was finally published in the mid-1950s and inspired his later work.

Question 38

Herbert Matter

Answer 38

• 1907-84
• a Swiss designer and photographer who thoroughly understood modernism’s new approaches to visual organization as well as its techniques, such as collage and montage. His posters from the 1930s use montage, dynamic scale changes, and an effective integration of typography and illustration. Photographic images become pictorial symbols removed from their naturalistic environments and linked together in unexpected ways. Matter pioneered extreme contrasts of scale and the integration of black-and-white photography, signs, and color areas.

Question 39

Walter Herbeg

Answer 39

• 1908-95
• A Swiss designer, Herdeg achieved design vitality through the selection and cropping of photographic images. During World War II, Herdeg launched a bimonthly international graphic design magazine entitled For forty-two years and 246 issues, he published, edited, and designed this publication, which sparked an unprecedented dialogue among graphic designers throughout the world.