OUGD601 - Practical - Bauhaus and Swiss Poster Design Research

The Bauhaus Style:

The Bauhaus School was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius. In this era, the movement sought to embrace 20th Century machine culture in a way that allowed basic necessities like buildings, furniture and design, to be completed in a utilitarian but effective way.
The school encouraged the embrace of modern technologies in order to succeed in a modern environment. The most basic tenet of the Bauhaus was 'form follows function'.
The school followed a regimented syllabus, which focused on the connection between theory and practice.
With their theory of form follows function, the school emphasised a strong understanding of basic design, especially the principles of composition, colour theory and craftsmanship, in a wide array of disciplines. Their courses taught students to eliminate the ideas of the individual and instead focus on the productivity of the design.

https://99designs.co.uk/blog/design-history-movements/know-your-design-history-the-bauhaus-movement/

The Bauhaus movement is said to have revolutionised design with it's key tenets of simplicity, functionality and rationality.

How can I incorporate elements of the Bauhaus style into my designs?

- The Universal Type font developed by Herbert Bayer was praised by Bauhaus designers for its 'visual clarity stressed above all' - use of san-serif fonts.
- Geometric designs, clean, clear construction.
- Remember the object's function and enhance it without need for decorative elements.
- Use of a grid system - consistency.
- Rationality - the larger something is, the more attention it will attract, etc.
- If you want to draw someone's eye to an element, 'tear' it away from the alignment everything else falls upon according to your grid.

https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/typography/5-ways-incorporate-bauhaus-graphic-design-in-your-work/

The Swiss Style:

This style became famous through the art of Swiss graphic designers, however it originally emerged in Russia, Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920's, which also became known as 'international style' after the 1950's.

The style emerged from the modernist and constructivist ideals (of which I can incorporate into my designs):

- Attention to detail, precision, craft skills, clear refined and inventive lettering and typography.
- Concerned with simplicity and the idea that 'form follows function' - the beauty in the underlines of a purpose, not beauty as a purpose in itself.
- Minimal elements of typography and content.
- White space - for visual impact and readability.
- Grid systems.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove" - Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

There is also a direct influence from the constructivism, elementarism and minimalism movements in the Swiss style artists. Minimal design is about removing the unnecessary and emphasising the necessary; it's about a functional and simple use of fundamental elements of style for the purpose of the artist's objectives.
This principle is one of the core reasons why Swiss style graphic designers pay so much attention to type. Typography is one of the most fundamental elements of visual communication that is able to deliver the message in a very precise, clear way. According to the Swiss movement, adding more elements without fully exploring the potential of the fundamentals can be considered a 'waste'. As these basic elements, like typography, have so much aesthetic potential, there's rarely a need for other visual graphics elements.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/lessons-from-swiss-style-graphic-design/