Foreword by Rob Saunders. Introduction by Ellen Lupton.
An unprecedented, definitive look at the school’s typography and print design, from its early expressive tendencies to the functional modernism for which it is famed today
The Bauhaus looms large as one of the most influential legacies in 20th-century graphic design. Known for its bold sans-serif typefaces, crisp asymmetrical grids and clean use of negative space, the school emerged as the forebearer of a new look—one that seized the tools of mass production in the creation of a radical new art. Today, just over 100 years after the Bauhaus’s opening in 1919, the school’s visual hallmarks have come to define modernity as it appears on the printed page.
The official catalog for Letterform Archive’s inaugural gallery exhibition, Bauhaus Typography at 100 explores the school’s legacy in graphic and typographic design through artifacts of its own making—its books, magazines, course materials, product catalogs, stationery, promotional fliers and other ephemera.
From the book’s beautifully designed pages, readers learn of typographic masters László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt, who channeled Constructivism’s geometric forms and optimism for industry into printed vehicles for the school’s teachings. Here is where Bauhaus typography—its rejection of serifs and capitals, embrace of experimental alphabets, insistence on universal clarity, and innovation in layering and hierarchy—took its distinctive shape.
The catalog also shines light on the Bauhaus’s lesser-known early forays into expressive lettering and illustration, also tracing the school’s immediate impact on seminal design movements such as the New Typography and, of course, on design practitioners working today. Lavishly illustrated, carefully researched and written, and accompanied by an in-depth introduction from noted Bauhaus expert, author and curator Ellen Lupton, Bauhaus Typography at 100 is a must-have for any fan of modern design.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Bauhaus Typography at 100'.
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Madeleine Morley
Looking at the Bauhaus’s letterforms across its short yet prolific fourteen year trajectory—and tracking how its lessons traveled abroad with the emigration of its professors and students—ultimately offers an intimate portrait of the school.
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Wednesday, March 30, from 3–4:30PM PST, Letterform Archive and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum present noted design curator and scholar Ellen Lupton on Bauhaus typography, and why it matters. Take a virtual tour of Letterform Archive’s exhibition Bauhaus Typography at 100, and get up close and personal with little-known works from the collection of the Cooper Hewitt. Look at key pieces of graphic design and learn how (and why) they were made. Discover the ideas, the people, and the stuff that made the Bauhaus an outsized legend whose influence is still felt today. Register here! continue to blog
Featured images—two posters by Herbert Bayer (1927 and 1968) and a spread from László Moholy-Nagy's 1928 Bauhausbücher series book, Painting, Photography, Film—are from Bauhaus Typography at 100, launching tonight with a talk by design luminary Ellen Lupton, who also contributes the Introduction to the book. "The Bauhaus remains today an open idea and a contested myth," Lupton writes. "Some designers working in the 1920s thought the Bauhaus was arrogant and self-important. In Germany in the 1920s and 30s, the egalitarian universalism of the Bauhaus was attacked by nationalists hawking their poisoned promises of racial purity. Even before the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis in 1933, it had become a flattened icon for functional design, and yet the school’s strongest educators—from Itten, Klee and Kandinsky to Moholy-Nagy, Albers and Schmidt—pursued humanistic, even spiritual, paths through their teaching. Moholy-Nagy left, in part, because he thought the school was becoming too focused on practical concerns. Later, postmodernists poked fun at its repression of history and ornament, as well as its ideological fervor. Today, the Bauhaus faces new tests of purity. The modernist legacy is Eurocentric, patriarchal and exclusionary. Although some design educators say, 'It’s time to throw the Bauhaus under the bus,' others keep finding new ideas in this school’s layered history. The people who lived, worked, wrote and taught within the Bauhaus’ glowing orb of influence struggled with the conflicts and possibilities of their time. They looked boldly forward—and also sideways—at the dangerous present. They left behind their own trails of light and shadow—traces to be read, interpreted, and questioned." continue to blog
Published by Letterform Archive Books. Foreword by Rob Saunders. Introduction by Ellen Lupton.
An unprecedented, definitive look at the school’s typography and print design, from its early expressive tendencies to the functional modernism for which it is famed today
The Bauhaus looms large as one of the most influential legacies in 20th-century graphic design. Known for its bold sans-serif typefaces, crisp asymmetrical grids and clean use of negative space, the school emerged as the forebearer of a new look—one that seized the tools of mass production in the creation of a radical new art. Today, just over 100 years after the Bauhaus’s opening in 1919, the school’s visual hallmarks have come to define modernity as it appears on the printed page.
The official catalog for Letterform Archive’s inaugural gallery exhibition, Bauhaus Typography at 100 explores the school’s legacy in graphic and typographic design through artifacts of its own making—its books, magazines, course materials, product catalogs, stationery, promotional fliers and other ephemera.
From the book’s beautifully designed pages, readers learn of typographic masters László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt, who channeled Constructivism’s geometric forms and optimism for industry into printed vehicles for the school’s teachings. Here is where Bauhaus typography—its rejection of serifs and capitals, embrace of experimental alphabets, insistence on universal clarity, and innovation in layering and hierarchy—took its distinctive shape.
The catalog also shines light on the Bauhaus’s lesser-known early forays into expressive lettering and illustration, also tracing the school’s immediate impact on seminal design movements such as the New Typography and, of course, on design practitioners working today. Lavishly illustrated, carefully researched and written, and accompanied by an in-depth introduction from noted Bauhaus expert, author and curator Ellen Lupton, Bauhaus Typography at 100 is a must-have for any fan of modern design.
