DM112 - Graphic Design
International Typographic Style

During the 1950s a design movement emerged from Switzerland and Germany that has been called Swiss design or, more appropriately, the International Typographic Style. The objective clarity of this design movement won converts throughout the world. It remained a major force for over two decades, and its influence continues into the 1990s. Detractors of the International Typographic Style complain that it is based on formula and results in a sameness of solution; advocates argue that the style's purity of means and legibility of communication enable the designer to achieve a timeless perfection of form, and they point to the inventive range of solutions by leading practitioners as evidence that neither formula nor sameness is intrinsic to the approach, except in the hands of lesser talents.
The visual characteristics of this international style include a visual unity of design achieved by asymmetrical organization of the design elements on a mathematically constructed grid; objective photography and copy that present visual and verbal information in a clear and factual manner, free from the exaggerated claims of much propaganda and commercial advertising; and the use of sans-serif typography expresses the spirit of a progressive age and that mathematical grids are the most legible and harmonious means for structuring information.
More important than the visual appearance of this work is the attitude developed by its early pioneers about their profession. These trailblazers defined design as a socially useful and important activity. Personal expression and eccentric solutions were rejected, while a more universal and scientific approach to design problem solving was embraced. In this paradigm, the designer defines his or her role not as an artist but as an objective conduit for spreading important information between components of society. Achieving clarity and order is the ideal.
More than any other individual, the quality of discipline found in the Swiss design movement can be traced to Ernst Keller (1891-1968). In 1918 Keller joined the Zürich Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Art) to teach the advertising layout course and develop a professional course in design and typography. In teaching and in his own lettering, trademark, and poster design projects, Keller established a standard of excellence over the course of four decades. Rather than espousing a specific style, Keller believed the solution to the design problem should emerge from its content. Fittingly, the range of his work encompassed diverse solutions. 
The roots of the International Typographic Style grew from de Stijl, the Bauhaus, and the new typography of the 1920s and 1930s. Two Swiss designers who studied at the Bauhaus, Théo Ballmer (1902-65) and Max Bill (1908-94), are principal links between the earlier constructivist graphic design and the new movement that formed after World War II. Ballmer, who studied briefly at the Dessau Bauhaus under Klee, Gropius, and Meyer in the late 1920s, made an original application of de Stijl principles to graphic design, using an arithmetic grid of horizontal and vertical alignments. Max Bill's work encompassed painting, architecture, engineering, sculpture, and product and graphic design. After study at the Bauhaus with Gropius, Meyer, Moholy-Nagy, Albers, and Kandinsky from 1927 until 1929, Bill moved to Zürich. In 1931 he embraced the concepts of art concret and began to find his way clearly. Eleven months before Théo van Doesburg died in April 1930, he formulated a Manifesto of Art Concret, calling for a universal art of absolute clarity based on controlled arithmetical construction.