The Bauhaus and the New Typography

Flashcards of key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture notes.

Fritz Schleifer

Designed a lithographed poster for the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, featuring a simplified face profile made of rectangles with a red square for the eye.

Joost Schmidt

A Bauhaus student who designed an exhibition poster in 1923 influenced by Russian Constructivism, using a tight oval shape and a red and black palette.

Staatliches Bauhaus im Weimar, 1919-1923

Exhibition catalog from the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, with layout by Moholy-Nagy and binding design by Bayer, known for its square format and bold sans serif lettering.

Gesamtkunstwerk

Concept of a total work of art, where architecture was proposed as the overarching synthesis of the arts at the Bauhaus, though not fully realized by 1923.

Dessau Bauhaus

The Bauhaus school moved to Dessau in 1925, where Gropius designed a new complex of buildings with three wings for workshops, administration, and a student dormitory.

Machine Aesthetic

Emphasized at the Bauhaus, utilizing modern industrial materials like steel, reinforced concrete, and glass, and exposing them rather than concealing them under traditional materials.

Form Follows Function

An axiom that helps illuminate the modern style of the Bauhaus, referring to the integrated nature of the aesthetic and functional elements.

Less is More

An axiom that helps illuminate the modern style of the Bauhaus, illustrated by the Bauhaus buildings' spartan negation of ornament.

Marcel Breuer

Designed chairs for the Dessau Bauhaus, such as the Wassily chair, which employed unadorned tubular steel for the frame and canvas fabric for the seat.

Herbert Bayer

Was appointed head of the typography and advertising workshop at the Dessau Bauhaus, focusing on commercial graphics and integrating typography with photographs.

Jungmeister

A new type of teacher at Bauhaus, who had completed the Bauhaus curriculum as a student and was subsequently hired as member of the faculty

Typophoto

Term coined by Moholy-Nagy to describe the integration of typography and photography in graphic work, aiming to convey the modern spirit with clarity.

Hannes Meyer

Promoted from head of the architecture workshop to overall director of Bauhaus; attempted to bring revolutionary communist politics to the fore at the school.

Josef Albers's Stencil

A geometric sans serif typeface developed at the Bauhaus in 1925, built from simple forms like semicircles, rectangles, and triangles, though difficult to read.

Bayer's Universal

A sans serif typeface that features strokes of uniform thickness, obviating the calligraphic element of most type; Bayer intended his new type to be printed by machines

Paul Renner

Designed Futura in 1927; the director of the typography department at the Frankfurter Kunstschule. Advocated the use of a single-case alphabet while trumpeting the clarity and the clean, logical forms of geometric sans serifs

The New Typography

The catch-all term for the modern progressive movement in typography of the 1920s, was first used by Moholy-Nagy in 1923. A focus on clarity

Jan Tschichold

Established himself as a leading voice in the promulgation of the New Typography. The son of a lettering artist and sign painter