Author: Edward Alston

Reading these texts helped me better understand how artists were always looking for ways to change art and design, as well as the impact and importance technology had, and still has, on art. It also helps to show what these artist’s predictions/ideas for what the future of design would look like.

It was interesting to read “The Theory and the Organization of the Bauhaus” by Walter Gropius, where Gropius talks about school and how people should change the way they think about their work as stated – “So long, however, as machine-economy remains an end in itself rather than a means of freeing the intellect from the burden of mechanical labor, the individual will remain enslaved and society will remain disordered. The solution depends on a change in the individual’s attitude toward his work.” I personally interpreted this in terms of assignments assigned in school; and how sometimes they are seen as just something to get done and turn in for a grade, therefor becoming a form of mechanical labor, but when we start to view assignments on a broader scale and how they actually can help us, the work begins to seems less monotonous.

In “Typophoto”, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy talks about revitalizing old techniques and updating them to fit with current times. I believe he means that you can use the same techniques that were established in the past, which can cause some forms of art and design to be forgotten or overlooked (something that Bayer goes more into detail about with Typography). As such it is good to try new and different techniques that involve new innovations that were not around during the development of old techniques. This helps keeps art fresh and current.

As previously mentioned, in “On Typography”, Herbert Bayer details the complications of the foundation of typography and communication and how it can be undervalued. He also briefly talks about the advances made in typography. Bayer mentions how typography’s success depends on public view.