The founder and first director of the Bauhaus was Walter Gropius. He developed his own theory and structure of what “The academy” or education on the topic of art should be. His main concern came from over abundant modern soul-less machine manufacturing that replaced the hand made artisanal objects. He was also concerned with art being less relevant in society which I believe he attributed that to technological advancements in society as well as how everything become so industrialized that the craftsmanship of what it used to take to make objects has left. Regardless of the negative outcomes of mass production he understood the benefits of it and wanted to use it in a way that gave it a bit more “soul”. His aim was to reunite fine art and functional design as well as making them practical, giving objects the soul of the artist.
I agree with the Bauhaus approach to teaching art and design and several other design disciplines together as opposed to separately which was the more traditional way of doing it. Students also learned through apprenticeships which bring back the more traditional aspects that the Bauhaus was influenced from, the arts and crafts movement. This is one key aspect that I believe was a game changer fro students. Interacting with other people from their field, as well as apprenticing under a master in their field teaches you more than what an art school can.
The bauhaus movement was mainly about problem solving and experimenting. We can see that as well in Lazlo Maholy Nagy’s essay “The Typophoto”. He coined the term typophoto, and described it as visually the most exact rendering of communication possible. He came to predict the importance of the combination of words and images to communicate, the main practice in graphic design itself. Herbert Bayer predicted having access to information available and ready whenever needed, and also predicted that people will read and write less, possibly eliminating the need for books. Herbert Bayer was also interested in solving universal communication, and sought out to create a universal typography. Most Interestingly to me is when he talks about Square Span, which is the layout of words by putting them into thought groups of two or three short lines as opposed to reading a continuous horizontal sequence. There was an example of the square span and as I read it, I found it to be much easier to read. This goes to show that any form of communication can be improved upon.
