For week 4 of history of design lecture — To Bauhaus & Beyond. As I was more interested in the typeface – I decided to focus my reflection of the Bifur typeface by A.M Cassandre.
Commissioned as to design a brochure for the Paris Type House of Deberny et Peignot from 1929, AM Cassandra created this series of the typeface which impacts the small world of publishing and printing.
Strokes from each letter are taken away, replaced by a shaded grey area which gives an illusion of a silhouette which completes the character/letter again.
The 16 pages in the brochure are rather minimalistic as there are big areas of white space used, which works well as each character have its own voice which would not work well if they are layout in lines and lines of paragraphs text. Till this day, the art of the Bifur typeface echos the art of decoration styling in the world.
Bauhaus Design Movement
Continuing to google to on “Bauhaus” and found one of the more modern designs that were affected by the design movement. Firstly because it has this distinct color palette, playing around with 3 to 4 colors. It is also the restriction of the number of colors enables the design to be able to harmonize well with each element overlay over one another. Personally I really enjoyed what this design movement created and change the way people design.
— Redefining the meaning of art – the point where minimalism and mass production meets.
“BAU” – Definition (construction and the desire to provide methodologies for mass production)
FUNCTIONAL TYPOGRAPHY VS STAGED TYPOGRAPHY
Originated from the German art school — Staatliches Bauhaus. Founded by Walter Gropius, a German architect. The design philosophy of Bauhaus is essentially “forms follows function” This particular philosophy explains how the Bauhaus is based on a no gimmick advancement, rather they are often straight forward and not complicated. Having that they choose utility how it have to have some practicality over being just aesthetic looking to the eye.
Typography
Upon looking up the history of Bauhaus typography, I was kind of in awe because I didn’t realize many of the “descendants” of Bauhaus were my all-time favorite type family font that I often use for my design. A list of my favorite font that was Bauhaus’s descendants was as Futura, Pantra
Resembling a stencil, traced like style effect, the Bauhaus font made an appearance in 1969, where it has somewhat-thin & equal strokes throughout most of the characters.
Unique aspect of Bauhaus type family
- Bold
- Strong identify
- Structured and geometric
- Balanced, equal
It seems to definitely have a voice of its own, able to catch the audience’s attention despite the lack of decorative elements.
“ Less is More ”
Moving on, it also affected the design in the world of architecture. Another interesting discovery was how the design of the Bauhaus font was used in designing certain parts of an architecture, building.
References:
http://graphicnothing.blogspot.com/2011/04/adolphe-mouron-cassandre-bifur.html
-https://blog.pixlr.com/graphic-design-the-bauhaus-style-in-2019/
