Kyasia Brown April 26, 2018
It all began with French Lloyd Wright, an architect who designed square houses. He created functional architecture that was beautiful and functional. He used asymmetrical forms and usage of space to prove himself as a designer. After him, a unisex school called the Glasgow school was made, bringing students to rectilinear design, further from Art Nouvea. Four students, “The Four” (Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret McDonald, Herbert McNair, and Frances McDonald) were inspired by Beardsley and created a geometrical, flat style that bled gracefully with curved lines. Ver Sacrum was where their artwork was held. It was a magazine whose name meant “sacred spring.” It helped formed the groundwork of graphic design. Many agree that it was a design laboratory more than a magazine.
Designers experimented to their hearts content and in the end, text, illustration and ornaments blended into one unified form. Instead of copying the past, artist focused on creating their own styles and experimenting with different subject and substrates. Kolo Moser created his own style known as “Kolo Style”. He was inspired by Art Nouvea and emerged as the leader of the Succession. Geometrical shapes was his forte and changed the face of graphic design forever. The Vienna Workshops were put together by Moser and Hoffman. They gave an alternative to poorly produced design, focused on harmony, proportion and decoration only when needed.
The rise of Pete Behrens, leader of the German Jugendstil, was an architect and a designer. he thought about how design influenced architecture and vice versa. he laid the ground work for many of the design problems we see today. He created a school based on his ideas, its intro courses were on Bauhaus design. The school was called DSAC (Dusseldorf School of Arts and Crafts). His first typeface was called Behrensschrift.
It was a sans seriff typeface. He did more advances in lettering when it became the basis for the AEG (Allgemeine Elektricitats-Gesellschaft; another school in which he taught) branding. The genesis’ belief was based in Morris’ Arts and Crafts Movement. They enjoyed functional design, but they recognized that machines were essential to creating designs. The German Association of Craftsmen was founded in Muncih where they put this idea to work and ultimately suceeded in bringing craftsmanshift to machinary. They embraced technological advances and others after them did, too. THE GENESIS Reflection #5
