Armin Hofmann

Armin Hofmann is a swiss graphic designer who is known for being a propagator of the swiss graphic design era. He was one of the key factors in developing the swiss style of graphic design, which includes crisp bold and blocky letters and layouts with a primarily sans serif typeface. The style involves using a mathematical grid to determine the placements of an object creating a uniform appearance to the overall design. 

Hofmann began his career as an apprentice in lithography and later went on to teach typography at the Basel school of design. He, his students, and his colleagues began developing styles and working with different graphic layouts and styles. His work is widely recognised for the reliance on foundational elements of graphic designs like point and line but also considering and conveying simplicity with hints of abstraction within his work, this makes his work so special and unique. Within his work he experiments with photography, primarily black and white as it is better within his work. Hofmann’s use of photography was revolutionary as he was pushing factual information into the realm of abstraction. Hofmann’s posters have been widely exhibited in numerous major galleries like the New York Museum of Modern Art. His posters emphasised a resourceful use of colour and font that is innovative and unique to his posters.

 

Fatih Hardal

 Fatih Hardal is a Turkish artist whose work is heavily based on typography. His work is greatly influenced by Swiss design, often using bold text with very blocky layouts. However, his work and posters are far from the mathematical grid used in Swiss graphic design. He often abstracts and manipulates his designs to create a hallucinogenic feel to the work. While his work is meticulous and you can see how methodical it is, there is an element of abstraction scattered through his work. There are psychedelic elements within his work that stray from the main principles of Swiss design. His work is mainly constructed in black and white to allude to the basis of Swiss-style he builds his work on 

Hardal has created a number of typefaces often blocky and gothic, for example, a gothic type influenced by architecture. He hs also made a typeface FH Giselle inspired by Armin Hofmann’s Giselle poster, featuring the Swiss layout and image of a dancer. I find it inspiring and fascinating that he can take an image and create a font from it. It shows he understands the premise and meaning behind certain designs and structures and creates something entirely new and different design from it.  Overall I really admire his style of graphic design. It is interesting that he takes traditional works and a particular way of thinking and designing and makes it entirely his own by building on top of foundational work. He combines different genres of art into one bold graphic design piece.