- Typography at the Bauhaus emerged from
the printmaking and advertising workshops.
Graphic design as a profession was in its infancy.
Printers, illustrators, and typographers
created posters, advertisements, and books.
There was no profession called graphic design.
What began as a sideline of printing
became one of the Bauhaus' most lasting legacies.
The typography workshop was, at the onset,
not the priority of the Bauhaus,
but it grew increasingly important
when Moholy-Nagy and alumni Herbert Bayer became involved.
Moholoy-Nagy's exploration with photography
and Bayer's modernist typography
and composition merged to
create a conceptually fresh approach.
Typography was to be an empirical means of communication
and an artistic expression.
But visual clarity was stressed above all.
At its cores, these three principles directed the work.
Number one, typography is shaped by function.
Number two, the aim of typography is communication.
It must appear in the simplest and strongest form.
Number three, typography must serve social needs
with ordered content, organization,
and relating the typography to the content.
As time passed, typography became increasingly connected
to the Bauhaus corporate identity and advertising.
To succeed as an institution,
the Bauhaus turned to sales of student work
and promotion through exhibitions.
The typography workshop was tasked
with the design of the promotional materials.
The use of simple sans serif typefaces
and photography, rather than illustration,
as the key graphic elements, set the tone
for what we call modern today.
In 1925, Gropius appointed Herbert Bayer
as director of printing and advertising.
Bayer, an alumni, had studied for four years at the Bauhaus,
under masters Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee,
and László Moholo-Nagy.
With typography, Bayer used
the simplest possible geometric elements.
His goal was the standardization
of the communication processes overall and the development
of a uniform typographic presence for the Bauhaus.
From 1925 to 1930, Bayer designed
a geometric sans serif universal typeface,
a typeface which combined upper and lower case letter forms.
This reinforced the Bauhaus concept
of an egalitarian society with equality for all.
In addition to Bayer's workshop,
all students were required to attend
two semesters of lettering design, taught by Joost Schmidt.
Again, looking back to a time
of craftsmanship and refinement,
Schmidt explored the geometrical structure
of letters, the circle, square, and rectangle.
These are universal forms,
divorced from political or class distinctions.
His students also explored aspects of advertising,
such as language, visual effect,
psychology, and economy of means.
The typography of workshop was interwoven with advertising.
Unlike today, there was no hard delineation
between advertising, graphic design, and typography.
The combining of these fields blurred the boundaries
and opened the door, 30 years later,
for the enormous growth of graphic design
as a profession after World War II.