OUGD401 Design Context: A Brief History... Design Process

GRIDS AND LAYOUTS:

 Front Cover:

PHOTOSHOP:

I used blend tools to create this over lay effect. I decided that this was an interesting way to add colour to my publication.

Here are 2 of my layouts. I was inspired by the layout on the right and the hierarchy of text i am really pleased with it.

I think this is one of my strongest, most successful layouts. It is informative and functional. It deals with the hierarchy of texts and guides your eye around the whole double page spread. I am really pleased with this double page spread and plan to use it throughout my book, as a page breaker from the more abstract, creative layouts.

I really like this way of portraying the important teachings and ethos of the bauhaus. I think it is bold, eye catching and informative.

PRINTING AND BINDING:
I Printed my publication in the digital print room. I decided that this was the most appropriate way to print it for a number of reasons. One reason is that it is the utilisation of new materials much like the teachings of the Bauhaus.

Printing my publication well in advance proved helpful as i noticed a glaring spelling mistake. Fortunately i had left my self enough time to get it reprinted.

I wanted to find a way to bind my book, so that the binding process was apparent. I wanted to do this as it shows my understanding of the bauhaus teachings. Form follows function. Creating a book with no embellishments or frills. A book that merely served it's purpose and didn't try to be something it wasn't. I was inspired by the binding technique of the democratic lecture book. I inquired to the author Craig Oldman and he told me that it had been factory produced. I was still interested in creating a bind with the same technique so i went to speak to the binding specialist and the LCA vernon street building. She told me that i could use PVA and a mesh fabric to gain a similar look and feel.

 I placed the book in to a press and secured it tightly with the spine exposed. 

 I then coated the spine with a thin layer of PVA glue. I waited half an hour and then reapplied PVA. I repeated this step 3 times.

I then used the guillotine to trim my book, in order to make the pages perfect size and crisp.

OUGD401 Design Context: A Brief History... Bauhaus research

To add theory to my publication I looked at other areas in Germany that effective the bauhaus modernism and that were effected by modernity.

1920- Nazi party formed Disagreed with the teachings of the Bauhaus.

1922- BMW open first factory in Germany German car manufactor is on the rise. Mimicing the trend of mass production practiced at the bauhaus.

1925- Einheitslok standardised rail Steam engines built in Germany after 1925 under the direction of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft were manufactured making extensive use of standard design features and components.

1928- Futura Font created Created in Germany in 1928, it displayed the core of the Bauhaus ideology: strictly geometric outline, lacking any embellishments and just barely conforming to the historical shapes of letters.

1933- Bauhaus closes under pressure from Nazi's The school was closed under pressure from the Nazi regime. Equipped with the teachings of the Bauhaus many artist fled the country and spread the modernist movement globally.

OUGD401 Design Context: A Brief History... Bauhaus research

Target audience:

my chosen audience is people interested in art and design and modernism. The book will be an introduction to bauhaus modernism, there fore will be aimed at people wanting to learn the basics. The book will be formal and instructional. It will have a formal tone, and use neccessary jargon and specialist language, As my audience will have a basic understanding of art and design language and terms.

What is the Bauhaus:

The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating a “total” work of art in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.

The school existed in three German cities (Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and Berlin from 1932 to 1933), under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime.

The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics. For instance: the pottery shop was discontinued when the school moved from Weimar to Dessau, even though it had been an important revenue source; when Mies van der Rohe took over the school in 1930, he transformed it into a private school, and would not allow any supporters of Hannes Meyer to attend it.



Ideologies of the Bauhaus:

In the annals of the twentieth-century avant-garde, the decade following upon the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the Armistice of 1918 was distinguished by a significant shift in the relation of modernist art to radical politics. Briefly stated, it was a shift that brought about a close but uneasy and ultimately tragic alliance between modernism in the arts and socialism in politics. From this ill-fated alliance, which had far-reaching consequences for both modernist art and the future of socialist cultural policy, neither the avant-garde nor the political Left escaped unscathed.

-Believe in a utopian society
-form follows function
-art and design should be accessible to all
-design becomes a globally understood language.
-driven my industrial revolution, use of new materials and need to mass produce.


Who taught at the Bauhaus:

Those who worked at the school shared three clear ideals with Gropius: to stop each of the forms of art from being isolated from each other; to raise the status of crafts to the same level as that of fine arts; and to maintain contact with the leaders of industry and craft, in order to achieve independence from government control by selling designs directly to the manufacturer.

-WALTER GROPIUS

-HANNES MEYER

-MIES VAN DER ROHE


Areas of design at the Bauhaus:

focussing on some of the areas of design, architecture was ebbeded in the very foundations of the bauhaus, ‘bauhaus’ meaning house of building. It is clear that the approach of building and architectural structurs has influenced almost every area of design at the bauhas.

NESTING TABLES

The Nesting Tables were originally created by Josef Albers for the so-called Moellenhof House in Berlin during this time at Bauhaus. Nesting Tables combine clear geometrical shapes with use of colour derived from Albers' painterly oeuvre. The frame is made of solid oak, the table tops of laquered acrylic glass.

CHESS BOARD

Fascinating, aesthetic, ingenious. The objects possess all these features, yet each one has its own individual character. One first understands this when held in the hand. Apart from the concept behind them, it is the quality of the workmanship which makes Bauhaus play objects so special. Respect for the material, wood and handcrafted with extreme care, result in this unique quality.

WASSILY CHAIR

The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-1926 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. Despite popular belief, the chair was not designed for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was concurrently on theBauhaus faculty. However, Kandinsky had admired the completed design, and Breuer fabricated a duplicate for Kandinsky's personal quarters. The chair became known as "Wassily" decades later, when it was re-released by an Italian manufacturer named Gavina who had learned of the anecdotal Kandinsky connection in the course of its research on the chair's origins.

Downfall of the Bauhaus:

Although nei­ther the Nazi Party nor Hitler him­self had a cohe­sive archi­tec­tural ‘pol­icy’ in the 1930s, Nazi writ­ers like Wil­helm Frick and Alfred Rosen­berg had labelled the Bauhaus “un-German” and crit­i­cized its mod­ernist styles, delib­er­ately gen­er­at­ing pub­lic con­tro­versy over issues like flat roofs. Increas­ingly through the early 1930s, they char­ac­ter­ized the Bauhaus as a front for Com­mu­nists, Russ­ian, and social lib­er­als. Indeed, sec­ond direc­tor Hannes Meyer was an avowed Com­mu­nist, and he and a num­ber of loyal stu­dents moved to the Soviet Union in 1930.
Under polit­i­cal pres­sure the Bauhaus was closed on the orders of the Nazi régime on April 11 1933. The clo­sure, and the response of Mies van der Rohe, is fully doc­u­mented in Elaine Hochman’s Archi­tects of Fortune.

OUGD401 Design Context: A Brief History of... Research

HIERARCHY OF TEXT:

DESIGN AT THE BAUHAUS:

INSPIRATION: