The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was an art school that operated in Germany from 

1919-1933. 

It was an art school that combined crafts and fine arts which became famous for the approach to design that it publicised and taught.

It initiated a fresh approach to design following the First World War with a focus on functionality rather than adornment. 

Walter Gropius was an architect and the founder of The Bauhaus in Weimar, however through it's existence it was ran under three different directors and in 3 different cities. 

Weimar: 1919-1928

Dessau: 1925-1932

Berlin: 1932-1933

Walter Gropius: 1919-1928

Hannes Meyer: 1928-1930

Mies Van der Rone: 1930-1933

Designs often consist of a range of solid shapes that combine together to look simplistic but sometimes busy. Typography is usually amongst the designs, often sans-serif fonts such as Futura. In some instances text is placed along the outer/inner lines of shapes which I think looks effective. 

Their unique style was influential to many areas of design such as art developments, architecture, graphic design, industrial design and typography.

Here is an example of work that I have done using Illustrator in the style of Bauhaus. I have used shapes, colours and text in the way that I interoperate the movement based on examples that I have seen in my research.

My T-shirt Designs

 These are the three T-shirts that I designed for my Graphic Image Making project. 

I used both studio and digital techniques, using research that I collected a long the way to influence me and experiments to develop and expand upon to enable me to create my final designs.

I am pleased with their results as I feel that they are different and unique to other designs that I have found in my research, particularly The Fray tee design.

Typography

Type has developed tremendously throughout the thousands of years that it has been around.

Many typefaces in use today are based upon designs created in earlier historical epochs. I find it fascinating to see the links between type from when it began in the form of cave paintings to current day.

It fascinates me that the latin text we use today can still be recognised in the early stages of it's development such as in Egyptian Hieroglyphics e.g. the shape of the bird that represented the 'A', has a resemblance to what we see today. 

The Moveable Type Press which was developed in 1436 by German printer Johannes Gutenberg, was the first printing process that allowed text characters to be reused. Consequently this provided further time and cost savings. I find it incredible how processes that were created so long ago, are still being used today in design as it shows that no matter how much technology has developed over the years, the old and practical methods are still inspirational and are often used.

  

The Arts and Crafts Movement

The Arts and Crafts movement began in Britain around 1880 and quickly spread across Europe, America and Japan. Inspired by the ideas of John Ruskin and the British artist and architect William Morris, it re-established a link between beautiful work and the worker and made a drastic improvement in the design of ordinary domestic objects and traditional handcrafts. It rediscovered honesty in design that is not found in mass produced products as it was based on simple forms, truth to materials and the use of nature as the source of pattern.

Typefaces were created by artists in the Arts and Crafts movement, such as Century Schoolbook in 1901 and Franklin Gothic in 1904 were both designed by Morris Fuller Benton, and Copperplate Gothic was designed by Frederic Goudy in 1905. 

These typefaces are still regularly used today, especially as the various weights in the Franklin Gothic typeface give it a lot of versatility, making it ideal for Newspapers.

I like the wild design patterns and natural colours as they are the features that make them easily recognisable as The Arts and Crafts Movement. They symbolise their honesty towards nature and materials which what makes them inspirational to others.