Dylan Cobelli

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Herbert Bayer

Gallery

Herbert Bayer, Kandinsky zum 60. Geburtstag, 1926

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• Herbert Bayer, Kandinsky zum 60. Geburtstag, 1926
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• Herbert Bayer, Architektur Lichtbilder Vortrag Professor Hans Poelzig, 1926
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• Herbert Bayer, 6 Vorträge, 1925
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• Herbert Bayer, Signal-Anzeiger, Signal-Schriftprobe No. 277, 1929
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• Herbert Bayer, Fagus Stanzmesser, 1923
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• Herbert Bayer, Neues Bauen in Frankfurt a.M , 1927
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• Herbert Bayer, Einladung Bauhaus Dessau, 1926
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• Herbert Bayer, Bauhaus Dessau Rechnung, 1926
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• Herbert Bayer, Fagus-Werk, Schuhleisten, Stanzmesser, 1926
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• Herbert Bayer, Fagus Stützmesser, 1926
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• Herbert Bayer, Bauhaus GmbH Rechnung, 1925-26
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• Herbert Bayer, 10 Banknotes, designed for the State Bank of Thuringia, 1923
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Gallery Info

The works selected for this gallery were picked from Herbert Bayer’s simpler, more bare-bones designs. The contents of the gallery involve almost entirely text-based designs(typically sans-seriff) with limited used of abstract shapes and sometimes photo. For the sake of avoiding complications, such as overwhelming viewers, Bayer keeps his colors monochromatic. All of these typographic works have a strong architectural structure to them. Each composition is rigidly put together with no dangling ends or floating text. While there is a great disparity between text sizes there always appears to be a counterbalance holding the shapes together. These radical differences in text sizes allow Herbert to give a fantastic amount of emphasis on certain key words. Herbert also shows a preference for taking words an places them inside of containers, whether it be within circles, squares, or grids, it has the noteworthy effect of isolating text from the rest of the page. Much of Herbert’s work seems to convey a sense of expressive restraint, he tries to keep things concise only showing what’s necessary. That being said, his minimalist typography still shows a fair deal of personality, giving off a bold, powerful impression.

BIO

Herbert Bayer is a graphic designer from Haag, Austria. He was accepted into Germany’s famous Bauhaus design school in 1921. Though an accomplished painter and photographer, Bayer was most known for his accomplishments in the typography and graphic design fields. He created a very geometry, sans-seriff typeface he called “Universal” which decided to drop uppercase letters entirely. Qualities of the type are how they have a very bold and round look to them. One detail that particularly appeals to me about the typeface, is the way that in some letters like “d” are just perfect circles with descenders and ascenders added on to them.

Herbert did a number of posters for Bauhaus. He usually sticks to flat colors to emphasize shapes in his designs. One of my favorite works of his would be his poster for architect, Hans Poelzig. It is a very sans-seriff type heavy poster with a few orange abstract shapes on a brown background. The left side of the poster is a fairly spacious with large bold text sandwiching smaller light text and a bold text containing circle. The top and bottom halves of texts have opposite allignments making the text forms appear to hook over one another. The orange circle in the middles hangs below the top half of text creating a perfect right angle. The right side of the page contrasts with left’s spacious by having a fairly dense sidebar of information. Two of words at the top are highlighted in orange blocks containing a number explaining the date of an event. As for the rest of the text, Bayer has created a neat internal logic by bolding, underling, and coloring words. Herbert Bayer has great talent for taking text and and turning them into really interesting structures.

OTHER INSIGHTS

1. Before his acceptance into Bauhaus, he apprenticed for an architect Josef Emanuel Margold in Linz, Germany.

2. He has a wide range of skill including Photography, Landscape architecture, and painting.

3. One of his reasonings for developing a lower case only typeface was to counter the fact that the German language capitalizes all nouns.

Sources

MOMA – pictures

Rogallery – bio info

Design Is History – bio Info