Tasks Due From Week 3

  • Schedule a meeting with the Professor
  • Review Manifestos, Movements, and the Avant-Garde
  • Add your Manifesto to Discussion: Manifestos
  • Complete Assignment: Reading Response 3
  • Week 3 Agenda Checklist

This Week’s Topics

Check-In & Share

Fall 2023 Playlist

Meetings

If you haven’t yet, please sign up for a remote meeting, please do that right now. If you are not available during the meeting slots, please contact me to find another time.

Schedule a Meeting

Use the Zoom Link to join the meeting.

Feedback & Your Manifestos

Feedback for the second week’s assignments has been posted. Check your post to see the comment and some inline feedback via Hypothesis.

Let’s take a quick look at your Manifestos from last week’s discussion post.

Freewrite – The Art of Noticing

Prompt: In your language of choice, write continuously in your notebook for 7 minutes about what you experienced when you listened for sound(s) you wouldn’t normally notice. Write down every detail you can remember. Don’t edit, or correct, don’t stop, just write. If you get stuck, just write the same word(s) over and over until you think of something else to write down. Feel free to embellish what you heard.

Activities

Below find the information covered in this session. Complete all of the following activities, videos, and assignments.

1. Geometric Abstraction in South America

Latin American geometric abstraction united international principles of modernist abstraction with local cultural traditions, and led to more participatory forms of art. It also served as an ideological tool for both Latin American artists and nation-states to signal a break with traditional art styles—associated with their colonial past—and to assert a new, modern, and often utopian industrialized future.

Joaquín Torres-García was inspired by De Stijl’s emphasis on the grid and Constructivism’s geometry, as well as what he believed to be the “universalism” of nonobjective art—in other words, he believed that geometric abstraction, which does not depict recognizable figurative imagery, could be visually understood across all cultures.

Geometric Abstraction in South America, an introduction
By Dr. Gillian Sneed

Joaquín Torres García’s Constructive Universalism

Other resources:

2. The Bauhaus: Form and Function (30 min)

In our last reading, we looked at writings from designers affiliated with the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus assimilated many of the ideas from the Dutch De Stijl Movement and Russian Constructivism, such as the utopian idea that design will make the world a better place; that it will transform society for a better way of life for all citizens; and that artists and craftspeople will work together through the use of technology and industrialization.

Some of the main tenets of the Bauhaus are still followed today in the field and in design schools across the globe.

1. A designer should strive for the highest quality and craftmanship modeled by order, geometry, and clear, refined typography.

2. Less is more. Excess ornament or information is unnecessary to communicate a message or to function.

3. Form follows function. Design should be functional. It should be organized and follow a clear hierarchy for clear communication. 

4. The use of technology and mass production of good design supports equality. If something is designed with simple forms can be accessible to everyone.

Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, and Herbert Bayer all contributed to the Bauhaus legacy. Below find some additional background to reinforce these ideas, and some follow-up questions to connect these principles to today’s field of design.

The Bauhaus Principles and Influence

Rewatch Graphic Design History sections De Stijl, Bauhaus 1 , Bauhaus 2, New Typography. on LinkedIn Learning or in the YouTube video (from 33:29 to 48:09) to refresh your knowledge of the Bauhaus.

László Moholy-Nagy and Typophoto

“Designing is not a profession but an attitude. Design has many connotations. It is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. It is the integration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space. Thinking in relationships.”

László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, Chicago 1947, p.42.

Moholy-Nagy’s work spanned all types of media, especially light as a medium. Of special interest to our discussion today is Moholy-Nagy’s interest in photography and typography and his vision of Typophoto, which he describes as “visually most exact rendering of communication.” The following video about his work was created in 1990. At the end is an animation in honor of Moholy-Nagy, imagining what he might have created if he had been alive during the digital age. Can you imagine what he might create if he had access to today’s technology?

A Memory of Moholy-Nagy – John Halas

New Typography is born at the Bauhaus

Jan Tschichold possessed a deep knowledge of traditional graphics and type, but rejected virtually all pre-modern conventions after visiting the first Bauhaus exhibition in 1923. He published “The Principles of the New Typography” three years later. In 1933 the ruling Nazi party imprisoned him for spreading Communist ideas. Shortly thereafter, Tschichold fled to Switzerland, where he remained for the rest of his life, continuing to design but rejecting the modern typographic principles of his early work. 

  • The new typography is defined by clarity and economy of expression, as opposed to ideas of beauty and ornamentation
  • Typography must not arise out of preconceived ideas, but by developing form from the function of the text
  • Asymmetry is optically effective, as it establishes definite, logical relationships within the text
  • Standardization of type achieves clear and objective forms, as standardized building materials are necessary for architecture
  • For the typographer ‘the most important requirement is to be objective’
“Jan Tschichold and the New Typography” with Paul Stirton at Bard Graduate Center

Herbert Bayer and Universal Communication

“Bayer’s universal alphabet became a symbol of ‘Bauhaus typography,’ even though it was not strictly speaking a typeface… Fixed in memory through a few endlessly repeated reproductions, the universal alphabet was a philosophical idea that reverberated throughout the promotional activities of the Bauhaus and beyond … they gave form to prevalent avant-garde thinking about function, modularity, industrial standards, and machine production.”

– Design Is Storytelling, Ellen Lupton
Ellen Lupton – Herbert Bayer – Bauhaus – Typography – CalArts

3. Discussion: Bauhaus & Universality through Technology

“What is typophoto? Typography is communication composed in type.
Photography is the visual presentation of what can be optically apprehended. Typophoto is the visually most exact rendering of communication…. a precise form of representation so objective as to permit of no individual interpretation.”

László Moholy-Nagy

“Universal Communication… exploration of the potentialities of the book of true text-picture integration has only begun and will, by itself, become of utmost importance to universal understanding.”

“‘square span’ is putting words into thought groups of two or three
short lines… the advantages of grouping words support the theory that we do not read individual letters, but words or phrases.”

Herbert Bayer

The writings from Walter Gropius: The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus (1923), László Moholy-Nagy; Typophoto (1925), Herbert Bayer; On Typography and Jan Tschichold, “The Principles of the New Typography” 1928: found in our main text Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field, highlight how early avant-garde designers were looking for universal methods of communication, often searching for ideal ways to reach the masses using new technologies and modalities.

  • Photography and film were the new technologies in the age of the Bauhaus. Combined with typography László Moholy-Nagy stated that Typophoto was the “visually most exact rendering of communication.”
  • Herbert Bayer is often credited with modernizing typography in the Bauhaus with his creation of the Universal alphabet. He also speaks of “text-picture integration” and the use of “square span,” short grouping of words for universal communication. Sound familiar?
  • The Bauhaus was heavily influenced by the Dutch De Stijl movement and Russian Constructivism. Jan Tschichold, a German typographer, wrote his seminal book The New Typography, which brought these ideas to the printing industry. These theories became rules and guidelines for simple, reproducible systems that we still use today.

Today we have multiple modes and methods of instant, mass communication. Consider the rise of “deep fakes“, the short, concise messages we send via Twitter, or the lack of subtlety and tone in email, text, or emojis. Is the ability to communicate truthfully, accurately, and effectively helped and/or hindered by technology today?

5. Assignment: Reading #4 (1 Hour)

Follow the assignment guidelines and prompts: Reading Response 4 – DUE Wednesday before the next class.

This week we looked at the New Typography movement and the Bauhaus of the 1920-1940s and now we will move into the evolution of Swiss Typography and the International Style and the eventual mainstream embrace of European modernism of the 1950’s.

With your classmates in our Hypothesis group, read Karl Gerstner, Designing Programmes pg55-61 and Joseph Muller-Brockman, “Grid and Design Philosophy” pg62-63 of our main text Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field by Helen Armstrong; and Margaret Rhodes, The Swiss Designers Breaking Tradition. To give a perspective of the influence of this style, the latter is a review of a 2016 exhibition featuring young Swiss designers.

Resources

Week 4 Agenda Checklist

Below are all of the tasks, big and small, for this week. The due date is Wednesday, 11:59 pm before our next class meeting. Timely completion of these tasks will contribute to your success in this course.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Tasks from the Week 4 Agenda
Name

Print this page