DESIGN JOURNAL 7

Lots of great design from early 20th century are still using nationally and internationally nowadays. For instance, the map for the London Underground created by Henry C Beck in 1933 is a standard railway and subway map using by many metropolises such as New York City of the United States, Tokyo of Japan, Hong Kong, and etc.

Map for London Underground, 1933

Henry C. Beck
By depicting a schematic concept of the subway lines rather than a conventional map, Beck simplified the communication of information for the subway rider.

International Typographic Style (ITS) is a design movement in the 1950s that emerged in Switzerland and Germany that has been called Swiss design. It began in Switzerland and Germany, then out grew its boundaries to become international. It was important in countries such as Canada and Switzerland as these countries are biligual and triligual. The designers who initiated the ITS held a philosophy that includes three important ideas. They are unity of design which requires asymmetric organization on mathematically constructed grid, objective photography and copy which presents visual and verbal information in a clear and factual manner, and sans serif typography which sets flush left and ragged right. In addition to above important visual characteristics, the ITS also prefers all caps or all lowercase, the use of grids, the use of Azidenz Grotesk and asymmetric type layout and free from the exaggerated claims of much propaganda and commercial advertising.

The initiators of this design movement believed sans-serif typography expressed the spirit of a progressive age and that mathematical grids were the most legible and harmonious means for structuring information. The new sans-serif fonts used in the ITS were inspired by the nineteenth-century typeface Akzidenz Grotesk. ITS is useful because it makes good sense when a diverse body of informational materials such as international corporations need to be unified. So, it was a precursor to corporate design.This design movement spread throughout the world and remained a major influence for over two decades and still continues. Ernst Keller, Théo Ballmer and Max Bill were important designers for this design movement.

Ernst Keller was born in 1891 in Switzerland. He established several training programs in design and typography and was called "the father of Swiss graphics". The economically drawn images and inventive lettering of his posters designed in the 1920s and 30s made an important contribution to Modernism. Keller believed that solution of design problem should emerge from its content. Rather than exposing specific style. He created a design system characterized by a rigid grid format, structured layout and unjustified type, which are visual characteristics of the ITS. The core of these ideas were first presented in the book Grid Systems in Graphic Design by his student Josef Muller-Brockmann. Below posters are by Keller:

Théo Ballmer was born in Basel. He was a student at the Bauhaus. He received part of his training at the Zurich Kunstgewerbeschule, where one of his teachers was Ernst Keller, the ‘father of Swiss graphic design’. In 1926 Ballmer worked as graphic designer for one of Basel’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Hoffmann-La Roche. He employed Modernist ingredients – flat areas of colour and geometrical lettering drawn with ruler and compasses on a grid – which remained a continuing speciality and part of a personal style. The earliest published example of this lettering is in the design of a shop-window display of watches, made in collaboration with the architects Ernst Mumenthaler and Otto Meier, partners in a leading progressive architectural practice. Connections to avant-garde movements – aesthetic and political – were to run through Ballmer’s career until the late 1930s. Below are examples of Ballmer's posters:

Max Bill was born in Switzerland. His work encompassed painting, architecture, engineering, sculpture, and product and graphic design. He embraced the concepts of art concret, a universal art of absolute clarity based on controlled arithmetical construction. During the 1930s, he designed layouts of geometric elements organized with on simple grids. Mathematical proportion, geometric spatial division, and the use of Akzidenz Grotesk type are features of his work. In 1950, Max Bill became involved in developing the graphic design program at the Institute of Design Institute in Ulm, Germany, which attempted to establish a center for research and training to address the design problems of the era. The curriculum included a study of semiotics: the general philosophical theory of signs and symbols. Bill's designs reflect his beliefs, stated in 1949, that "it is possible to develop an art largely on the basis of mathematical thinking". Below are examples of Bill's work: