April 5th

Bauhaus review:

Walter Gropius was the first director of the Bahaus from 1919 to 1928 

the final director was Mies van der Rohe. 

1925 until 1932- Dessau, Gropius replaced Meyer in 1928 and then Meyer was replaced byVan der Rohe in 1930. 

During this time ideas from all art movements were applied to the functionality of design and typography was utilized as communication. 

Herbert Bayer designed the universal alphabet with no capital letters, which in turn made it harder to read. 

Walter Gropius came to America in 1937 when he accepted a job at Harvard. Once he started his job he became overwhelmed with the way architecture was taught in America and decided to take over the architecture school at Harvard. He taught his students the same lessons that were taught at the Bauhaus and and greatly influenced design in America during the Great Depression, with other schools beginning to adopt his ideas. Soon many others from the Bauhuas followed him to America to teach as well. Laslow Maholy Nagy became very close with Gropius and moved on to each architecture in Chicago and created a new Bauhaus. Maholy's approach to teaching was to give students projects that helped them succeed by letting them explore and make mistakes on their own.

Jan Tschichold - caligraphy, hand written invitations, san serif type, limited color, open space

1924 - Writes pamphlet describing typography and design, while producing work similar to Bauhaus.  

1925 - Writes an elementary book about asymmetrical typography 

1928 - Publishes the new typography at age 25

Jan states that the most efficient way to send a message through type is clearly and simply while using grids and and simple construction. Later in his life (after being confronted by Nazis) he moves to Switzerland where he sets out to create a new style using a more classical approach. 

Herbet Matter - Starts his own style after coming to America in 1936

He utilizes: clear typography, extreme perspective and scale shifts, and creates a photo montage in posters designs.

Throughout his career he eveloped a basic vocabulary of elements to create travel brochures, did work and advertisements for Knoll chairs, and creates sketches for NHRR logo.

Addison Duiggins - San Serif type

Utilizes an abstract composition and a limited palette.

WPA was a federal art project that was paid for by US tax dollars and gave artists plenty of work and also provided posters and designs for important causes.

Ladislav Sutnar - Uses abstract designs with negative space. 

Lester Beale was one of the first to bring modern aesthetic teachings to America. This artist uses a lot of arrows, bars, and rules in his compositions along with old wood cut typography. He was known for work with Rural Electrification Administration. This was to convince population that electricity is a good idea for rural areas. 

International style: clean and efficient works, which included everything from graphic design, fine arts, typeface design, and architecture.