Gropius’ Manifesto

The Bauhaus (translated: House of Building) was an influential, forward-thinking German school of architecture and applied arts founded by German architect, Walter Gropius, in 1919.  Gropius outlined in the Bauhaus Manifesto his goal to cultivate a school which integrated art, craftsmanship and technology to create exciting, modern design. In summary, he wished to rebuild a world suffering economically, socially and culturally in the wake World War One’s devastation. The Bauhaus’ aim to create design which benefitted the collective led to the basic rule that functionality dictated form. Designers must be justified in their choices; producing durable outcomes that served a purpose while pushing for original, modern aesthetics. Iconic artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky both taught at the Bauhaus, using their tenures to push the boundaries of the foundational elements within art and design that are visual motifs associated with school.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee (1879-1940) was a Swiss-born German artist who explored and experimented with colour theory during his time at the Bauhaus. The artist mused that “to paint well means only this: to put the right colours in the right spot”; creating some of his most famous work including: “Static Dynamic Graduation” (1923), an abstracted oil and gauche grid painting which explores the relationships between a range of earth tones. His practices in colour can be applied to interaction design today, as it is important that creators today utilise colours that both complement one another while also ensuring elements are legible for a customer to read.

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter, art theorist and a close friend of his colleague, Paul Klee. Kandinsky was appointed to The Bauhaus School in 1922, teaching painting classes which explored abstraction, and psychology through the visual arts. His work during this period like “Swinging” (1925) present the role geometric shapes came to play a dominant role in Kandinsky’s pictorial vocabulary at the Bauhaus. Bauhaus practitioners like Kandinsky began to work with shapes to create a “universal language” which could reach a wider, international audience. Shapes continue to play an important role in communicative design, appearing in the form of icons and symbols like the trashcan, utilised by interaction designers to translate system functions to a customer.

László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) was a Hungarian painter, photographer and teacher at the Bauhaus school from 1923 to 1928. Moholy-Nagy is famous for his concept of typo-photo, the synthesis between photography and typography, which can be considered as the inception of the modern-day graphic design. His design for the title page of “Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1919-1923” (1923) is an example of how he utilised this method to overlay text which has been sliced into smaller sections with regular typography. The poster also features bold, block type that is placed on a vertical and horizontal axis which creates interesting, angular shapes in place of illustrations.

Constructivism

Constructivism was a modernist movement founded in 1915 by Russian artists Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Similarly to The Bauhaus’ aim, Constructivists wished to create art and design which served the public and reflected the rapidly industrialising world at the turn of the 20th century. Many Russian constructivists were keen to contribute their work in aid of the socialist Bolshevik’s government following the party’s consolidation of power after the 1917 Revolution. Millions of Russians could not read at this time – thus, it was vital that artists produced posters and other forms of propaganda which could communicate with its audience through elements other than typography. One of the best examples of this is El Lissitzky’s “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1919). The lithograph poster shows a series of dynamic, geometric shapes in a limited colour palette of red, black and white. A large, aggressive red triangle is shown piercing through a white circle, while other smaller red shapes chase white forms across a black plane. The dagger-like point of the triangle creates tension when juxtaposed with the arced, white shape; a similar effect is created by the dispersing smaller shapes as the are arrange tightly together without touching. Minimal text is used on the landscape poster with only four individual words scattered across the space. Instead, Lissitzky relies on the publics associations with colour to communicate the current events taking place in the Russian Civil War. The largest triangle or the wedge is rendered in red, a colour synonymous with the Soviet Government and its Red Army while their opponents during this conflict, made up of a collection of anti-communist forces including foreign military backing and Russians loyal to the Tsar, were known as the White Movement. Thus, Russian citizens, both illiterate or not, would have easily understood the message of the poster; the Red Army was successfully defeating the Whites and pushing them out of Soviet Russia. The poster and its content epitomise Constructivism’s desire to assist “pushing Russia into the future” through the simplest elements in design, during the most significant point in the country’s history. As with Kandinsky’s work, Lissitzky highlights the influence of geometric shapes – a practice that continues in interaction design. Simple geometric shapes and points are key to creating legible outcomes that can be quickly and easily understood by the intended audience.