Modern Era: Bauhaus and New Typography

goals of the Modernist era: "To smash the old visual language and create a new one."

*Henryk Berlewi (on advertising design): "must rest on the same principles as prevail in modern industrial production." 

-photos replaced realistic, decorative, or otherwise sentimentalized illustration

-"photomontage" as most popular tool of new graphic design

Modern Design:

1. asymmetric typography

2. geometric layout

3. photogrphic illustration

cubism (a modern movement) broke with reliance upon nature for subject matter and the complete rejection of decorative tendencies

first Modernist battles: waged against the industrialists, who controlled public taste and used it for their own functions and interests

BAUHAUS: (pg.  112 - 117 in textbook)

students encouraged to produce utilitarian materials fit for everyday use

new products had no precedents in the decorative arts of the past

not focused around the bourgeoisie interests: the masses were the consumers

Peter Behrens (father of Industrial Design)

NEW TYPOGRAPHY: (pg. 118 - 125)

asymmetric text (introduced by Cubism, Futurism, and Dadaism) 

total revision of the rules of traditional commercial layout

writings by *Jan Tschichold

"criterion of fitness for purpose in design"

the school was "working in the real world" - very practical design

El Lissitzky did first formal application of the new approach

(Herbert Spencer argued that it contradicted the free spirit of modern typography)

not dependent on readymade layouts and would express the spirit, life, and visual sensibility