Define, in your own words, the Bauhaus, De Stijl and Swiss Movements.
The Bauhaus
The Bauhaus was a German art school. It was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius and closed their doors in 1933 due to the pressure from the Nazi political party. Even when the school closed the staff continued to spread its idealistic precepts as they left Germany and emigrated all over the world.
The school was famous for its approach to design, as well as a combination of fine art with arts and crafts. The Bauhaus movement had an influence upon the developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design and typography. Sans serif type was used and taught at school because they believed that its simplified geometric form was more appealing and useful, rather than the ornate German standard of blackletter typography.
De Stijl
De Stijl is Dutch for «The Style”, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. The key elements to De Stijl was to simplify the visual compositions to vertical and horizontal, using only black, white and primary colors. De Stijl is also the name of a journal that was published by Theo van Doesburg, who was a Dutch painter, designer, writer and critic. The journal represented the most important work of graphic design from the movement.
The De Stijl movement also influenced typography, industrial design and music. In music De Stijl was influenced only on the work of composer Jakob van Domselaer. This minimalistic music defined “horizontal” and “verical” music elements and balanced out those two principles. Between 1923 and 1924 the only building that have been created completely according to De Stijl principles is the Rietveld Schröder House, designed by Gerrit Rietveld.
Swiss Movements
Swiss Movements is a graphic design style that evolved in Russia, the Netherlands and Germany in the 1920s, and was further developed by designers in Switzerland in the 1950s. This kind of style is also referred to as The International Typographic Style or Swiss Style. This type of graphic design is a part of the modernist movement, impacting many design-related fields like architecture and art.
It emphasises cleanness, readability and objectivity. This kind of style uses sans-serif typography, grids and asymmetrical layouts. It also uses a combination of typography and photography as a way of visual communications. The most influential works were in the form of posters, as it was seen as the most effective way of communications with other people.
For each of these movements: find examples from their eras, as well as current designs that are influenced by these styles.
The Bauhaus – The Marcel Breuer´s Wassily chair, also known as Wassily chair, is one of the most famous products of the Bauhaus School. The chair consists of skeletal framework and a stretched seat, back and arms. Marcel was famous for a number of furniture design.
Today:
The Bauhaus influenced can be seen everywhere to this date, from furniture to graphic design. The minimalism trend which is one of the most popular trends to date shows how the Bauhaus helped to step away from the ornate designs, to emphasis on function before form.
De Stijl
Here is a classic pattern used in De Stilj design. It consists of geometric forms – usually straight lines, squares and rectangles, and also primary colors. The art was expressing the artists´serach “for the universal, as the individual was losing its significance.”
Today:
The key principles of De Stijl can still be seen everywhere today, and more specific in digital design. In the 1990s digital design was an explosion of designs, colors and patterns. Now we look for something functional minimalist designs, abstract and elegant. Today in the digital design shows a preference for horizontally oriented shapes and a grid-based layout. This kind of layout strongly resembles the characteristic De Stilj compositions like Windows 10.
Swiss movement
Swiss design uses an asymmetric layout with text aligned flush-left, ragged-right, sans serif type like Akzidenz Grotesk and Helvetica. The style also uses photographs instead of illustrations and a mathematically determined grid to determine the placement of design elements.
Today:
The work on Swiss Style Now is full of personality and emotions while also including the traditional style from the past. This poster uses photography instead of illustrations and placing emphasis on the mathematics of the grid. Most likely the font used on the poster is Helvetica as it is big and readable.
Research, written & practical assignment
Look at the history timeline at the beginning of this lesson. Gather information from 1900 – 2000, and design your own timeline using the Swiss Design Style as your theme.
My Reflective Journal 