The Swiss Style

During the 1950s a new style of design emerged in Switzerland as credited in the movements title: the Swiss Style; and later the International Typographic Movement as it spread worldwide for the next two decades. The pioneers of the movement advocated for design that was grounded in its functionality. There was a promotion of techniques including: mathematically constructed grid structures; sans-serif typefaces like Helvetica; use of objective photography and geometric shape; and motifs like asymmetry which balanced the elements with the design. These methods were utilised by the key practitioners of the movements including Josef Müller-Brockmann, Armin Hofmann, Massimo Vignelli and Rosemarie Tissi in an effort to create design which presented honest fact and veered away from the exaggerated and false propaganda of the past decades.

Typography and the Helvetica Documentary

“doing away with these manual details in it, and we were impressed by that because it was more neutral. And neutralism was a word that we loved. it shouldn’t have a meaning in itself. The meaning is in the content of the text, not in the typeface. And that’s why we loved Helvetica very much.”

– Wim Crouwel

The pioneers of the International Style favoured sans-serif typefaces like Helvetica and Univers- both of which were developed during this era. Sans-serif typefaces lack decorative embellishments that can be seen on more classically styled designs like Times New Roman that features details like swashes and tails. Helvetica was developed by Swiss typographers Eduard Hoffman and Max Miedinger in 1957. The sans-serif typeface was based on an older typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk which Hoffman and Miedinger perfected by producing a design that was consistent in its equal weight. It was interesting to learn about the typeface from the 2007 documentary: Helvetica, directed by Gary Hustwit which explores why the typeface is so iconic.  As Italian designer Massimo Vignelli highlights in the documentary: “Helvetica is a typeface that is generated from a desire to have better legibility” – epitomised the Swiss Styles desire to prioritise functionality and then to create a design that is appropriate. Vignelli’s use of the typeface in best known design for the New York City Subway System is a great example of Helvetica being utilised for its readability. Another typographer, Mike Parker (Director of Typographic Development) noted in the documentary that the typeface “lives within a powerful matrix of surrounding space”: “Helvetica is about is the interrelationship of the negative shape, the figure ground relationship, the shapes between characters and within the characters. The Swiss pay more attention to the background so they hold the characters”. He suggests that this employment of the background as much as the actual design allowed the typeface to fulfil its purpose as a neutral tool to communicate with the audience; rather than an expressive, exaggerated font style.

Grid Structures

Josef Müller-Brockmann was a Swiss graphic designer, typographer and pioneer of the Swiss Style. His use of grid as logical practice to produce organised visual hierarchy is illustrated in designs like : “Der Film” (1960), his Music Viva series (1959) and “Juni-Festwochen Zürich” (1957) where grids are used as both an underlying groundwork or manifested within the design to create dynamic use of shape. The possibilities of grid are also showcased by Swiss graphic designer, Armin Hofmann. Hofmann’s: “Good Design” (1954) poster utilised a grid to slice the perimeters of an arc, creating the posters title in an interesting and modern typeface based on shape. I included a screenshot of an experiment using grid and a geometric arc to create recreate the text from Hofmann’s work.