Week 09 – Design History and Styles – LT – Research on Late Modernism
Swiss International Style
How would you define the style? Do a write-up of about 350 words and discuss the characteristics of the style, the typefaces that were prominent and the philosophy behind it.
Swiss Design (‘International Typographic Style’ or just ‘International Style’) is a style of design from the 1940s and 50s that originated in Switzerland and had a great impact on the development of graphic design in the 20th century.
The style aimed to make the design as invisible as possible, meaning that the designer’s subjectivity should be oppressed and the content should be in total focus. It focuses on the minimal elements such as typography, photography and content layout instead of textures, illustrations etc. The main focus should be on communication, making sure that the message is clear, universal and absolute – which is why the designers favoured simplicity, sans-serif typography, legibility and objectivity when creating a design.
Most designers of the Swiss Design movement also favoured negative space, asymmetrical compositions and the combination of typography and photography, and meant that the most effective means of visual communication were posters.
The Swiss Design style can be described and recognised as crisp, blocky and minimalistic, with sans-serif typefaces. It’s main focus is on communication and goes by a “less is more” philosophy.
Known artists are:
- Armin Hofmann
- Josef Müller-Brockmann
- Max Bill
- Emil Ruder
- Richard Paul Lohse
- Ernst Keller
Do a write-up of about 350 words on what you think the main influences were on the Swiss International Style.
There are several things that have influenced the Swiss Design movement, some of them being modernist and constructive ideals, as well as De Stijl and the Bauhaus.
The style was also heavily influenced by the aftermath of WWII, when international trade had begun to increase and the relationships between countries grew stronger. At this time, the best way of communicating between international partners was to create simple designs that focused on simplicity, clarity, objectivity and region-less glyphs and symbols.
The Swiss Design movement was led by designers Josef Müller-Brockmann and Armin Hofmann. It emerged from the modernist and constructivist ideals of simplicity – “the beauty in the underlines of a purpose, not the beauty as a purpose itself”. It also has strong ties to the Bauhaus, and was influenced by the Bauhaus principle “form follows function”. The principle became sort of like a ‘battle-cry’ amongst Modernist architects after the 1930s and influenced Swiss Design by highlighting the minimal elements of style, like typography and content layout as opposed to illustrations.
The style was also influenced by a lot of designers’ desires to present information in an objective way that was free from the influence of associated meaning. From the modernist graphic movement, it evolved to a style that aimed to communicate in a clear and universally straightforward manner.
Read up on the different schools within the Swiss International Style: The Zurich School of Arts and Krafts and The Basel School of Design and do a write-up of the similarities between them and the differences in their approaches.
The two major Swiss design schools that were responsible for the early years in the Swiss Design movement are The Zurich School of Arts and Krafts and The Basel School of Design. The Basel School of Design’s foundational course was heavily inspired by a graphic design technique based on grid-work from the 19th century. Shortly after the modification of the foundational course at The Basel School of Design, Ernst Keller became a professor at The Zurich School of Arts and Krafts where he began developing a graphic design typography course.
After studying at The Zurich School of Arts and Krafts, Joseph Müller-Brockmann later returned to the school as a professor. Armin Hofmann taught typography at The Basel School of Design and later became the head of the school, replacing Emil Ruder.
Since Joseph Müller-Brockmann and Armin Hofmann both studied with Ernst Keller and had a lot of the same influences in their styles, there would also be a lot of similarities between the two schools and their approaches to teaching and Swiss Design.
While both schools favoured simplicity, objectivity and focused on getting the clear message across through visual communication without any trace of the designer’s subjectivity and noise, they also had some different approaches and ways of teaching.
The Basel School of Design heavily focused on grid design and content layout while The Zurich School of Arts and Krafts had a more typographic approach.
Sources
https://99designs.no/blog/design-history-movements/swiss-design/
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/lessons-from-swiss-style-graphic-design/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Typographic_Style
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