Bauhaus

I shall now be looking into one of the most influential art and design movements within history. The Bauhaus.  It is important to note that the Bauhaus did not just focus on fine arts or 3d design but instead as a school it wanted to focus on variety.

Bauhaus was one of the most definitive design movements of the modern age, reaching its peak between the 2 world wars. The word Bauhaus name, mostly translated from German, means house of construction or school of building, even though there was no architecture as such within the first years of its existence. Bauhaus was a new type of art school, historically European art academies thought each design subject separately, the Bauhaus offered foundation training in many design disciplines, they believed in verity. Understanding mass production was part of the curriculum and the school sought to develop students with art and craft whilst embracing new technologies. It was also the beginning of the art school as an alternative way of life. Germany at that time was a rather conservative place though.

Bauhaus initial idea was to reject the idea of decorative art and replace it with minimalism in mass production. Its main inspiration came from the De Stijl movement which was a modernist movement founded by Theo Van Doesbeurg, its characteristics were the use of primary colours and horizontal and vertical lines and rectangular forms. The Bauhaus focused on intense form, absolute clarity, and distinctive visual identity.

Bauhaus was clearly a big influence on graphic design, looking at our present day graphic design we still constantly see the influences Bauhaus. As with other movements we notice that movements emerge from movements. And a very important graphic design movement emerged from the Bauhaus which was the New Typography which basically shared many characteristics with Bauhaus, but continued experimenting with type to create more influential pieces.