Bauhaus (typeface)

Last updated
Bauhaus
Bauhaus and Bauhaus 93 Typeface.svg
Category Sans-Serif
Classification Parahaus
Designer(s) Joe Taylor
Foundry Fotostar
Date created1969
Re-issuing foundries ITC Ronda
ITC Bauhaus
CharactersBauhaus 93: 240
GlyphsBauhaus 93: 270
Design based onUniversal
VariationsBauhaus 93

The Bauhaus typeface design is based on Herbert Bayer's 1925 experimental Universal typeface and the Bauhaus aesthetic overall.

Contents

The Bauhaus school sought to modernize, unify and standardize design into an idealistic form that would combine function with aesthetics. One aspect of their many proposed reforms was a series of related Bauhaus typefaces.

Common elements of Bauhaus fonts include geometric, sans-serif letterforms.

History

Contrary to their current perception, in its early years, the Bauhaus school printed serif art nouveau typefaces. After some years of design work at the school, Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt created the more recognizable proposals—sans-serif geometric letterings, with decorative elements of the font removed for a crisp industrial style. In that era, they would only be drafts, and were not manufactured into printing typefaces yet, [1] although they were used for signs, book covers and publications by the Bauhaus. [2]

Universal by Bayer. Universal-Schrift von Herbert Bayer.png
Universal by Bayer.

The most well known Bauhaus typeface is Bayer's Universal. [2] Major elements of Bauhaus typography in Bayer's original form were the elimination of capital letters, composition based on strong geometrical elements and expressive use of colors, and the replacement of the Gothic font by a more cosmopolitan font suitable for the move from handcrafted to standardized production. [3]

Jan Tschischold, heavily inspired by the Bauhaus school though never a member, developed a New Typography in 1928. [4] The treatise shaped modern typography, printing, and graphic design. [5]

In 1929, Bauhaus professor, László Moholy-Nagy, issued a statement that said typography "must be communication in its most intense form. The emphasis must be on absolute clarity." [6] [7]

Blippo

Blippo was designed by Joe Taylor for Fotostar in 1969 as a black version of Burko Bold, which, in turn, is based on the unfinished design by the German Bauhaus school. The font was named Blippo Black by Taylor's boss, Robert Trogman. [8] It retains proportion and fit of ITC Ronda.

Blippo was used by Nintendo for the title screen of Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2 . [9]

Bauhaus 93

Bauhaus 93 is a variant of URW Blippo Black. It was first released in 1993 by the URW Type Foundry. [10] Only one font was produced. It is available as a pre-packaged font in Microsoft Word, and is used within the backsplash for 3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet . It is also used for the Postman Pat and Playmobil logos, around Disney's Polynesian Resort, as well as the Amiibo logo. It was also used on Xinwen Lianbo in 1996 and Chuzzle as well as Homestar Runner [9] [11] and was used for the Filmways Television logo from 1976 to 1983, as well as its film division from 1981 to 1982.

ITC Ronda

It was designed by Herb Lubalin in 1970. It adds lowercase letters to the family.

Distinguishing characteristics include the shapes of the upper right third of the capital B, P and R, as well as the half-circle form of the descender of the Q. ITC Ronda is similar to Michael Neugebauer's "Litera"; both fonts display styles characteristic of the Bauhaus work.

ITC Bauhaus

ITC Bauhaus was designed by Ed Benguiat and Victor Caruso in 1975. Inheriting the simple geometric shapes and monotone stroke weights of Herbert Bayer's universal, it includes separate upper and lower case characters. Five weights of Roman fonts were made for this family. Unlike the earlier ITC Ronda, the letters have open instead of closed counters.

Bauhaus Heavy was originally intended to be a display-only design and was accompanied by Bauhaus Outline. With the advent of digital technology, the Outline version was dropped from the family, while the Bauhaus Heavy was made part of the now text/display offering.

Under Adobe's development, the font family supports the ISO-Adobe character set for the PostScript version. In OpenType Std version, it supports the Adobe Western 2 character set.

Monotype also produced versions that include Cyrillic or Central European characters.

The font was also named "Geometric 752" by Bitstream, "BH" by Itek.

Other typefaces

Other Bauhaus designs released in the phototype era include Pump and Horatio. [12]

Additional Bauhaus typefaces in digital fonts include Joost, Julien, Mohol Type, Laslo, Nobel revival, and Pareto. [13]

Lost typefaces were recently restored and they include CarlMarx, Joschmi, Xants, Reross and Alfarn. [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sans-serif</span> Typeface classification for letterforms without serifs

In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism. For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into these major groups: § Grotesque and § Neo-grotesque, § Geometric, § Humanist and § Other or mixed.

Herbert Bayer was an Austrian and American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and architect. He was instrumental in the development of the Atlantic Richfield Company's corporate art collection until his death in 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Garamond</span> Typeface family

Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for book printing and body text.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Futura (typeface)</span> Geometric sans-serif typeface

Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927. It was designed as a contribution on the New Frankfurt-project. It is based on geometric shapes, especially the circle, similar in spirit to the Bauhaus design style of the period. It was developed as a typeface by the Bauer Type Foundry, in competition with Ludwig & Mayer's seminal Erbar typeface of 1926.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Benguiat</span> American type designer (1927–2020)

Ephram Edward Benguiat was an American type designer and lettering artist. He designed over 600 typefaces, including Tiffany, Bookman, Panache, Souvenir, Edwardian Script, and the eponymous Benguiat and Benguiat Gothic.

Aldo Novarese was an Italian type designer who lived and worked mostly in Turin.

Robert Joseph Slimbach is Principal Type Designer at Adobe, Inc., where he has worked since 1987. He has won many awards for his digital typeface designs, including the rarely awarded Prix Charles Peignot from the Association Typographique Internationale, the SoTA Typography Award, and repeated TDC2 awards from the Type Directors Club. His typefaces are among those most commonly used in books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Century Gothic</span> Sans-serif font family

Century Gothic is a digital sans-serif typeface in the geometric style, released by Monotype Imaging in 1991. It is a redrawn version of Monotype's own Twentieth Century, a copy of Bauer's Futura, to match the widths of ITC Avant Garde Gothic. It is an exclusively digital typeface that has never been manufactured as metal type.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bookman (typeface)</span> 1869 serif typeface

Bookman, or Bookman Old Style, is a serif typeface. A wide, legible design that is slightly bolder than most body text faces, Bookman has been used for both display typography, for trade printing such as advertising, and less commonly for body text. In advertising use it is particularly associated with the graphic design of the 1960s and 1970s, when revivals of it were very popular. It is also used as the official font of Indonesian laws since 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sabon</span> Serif typeface

Sabon is an old-style serif typeface designed by the German-born typographer and designer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974) in the period 1964–1967. It was released jointly by the Linotype, Monotype, and Stempel type foundries in 1967. The design of the roman is based on types by Claude Garamond, particularly a specimen printed by the Frankfurt printer Konrad Berner. Berner had married the widow of a fellow printer Jacques Sabon, the source of the face's name, who had bought some of Garamond's type after his death. The italics are based on types designed by a contemporary of Garamond's, Robert Granjon. It is effectively a Garamond revival, though a different name was chosen as many other modern typefaces already carry this name.

The International Typeface Corporation (ITC) was a type manufacturer founded in New York in 1970 by Aaron Burns, Herb Lubalin and Edward Rondthaler. The company was one of the world's first type foundries to have no history in the production of metal type. It is now a wholly owned brand or subsidiary of Monotype Imaging.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert-Jan Pool</span> Dutch professional type designer (born 1960)

Albert-Jan Pool is a Dutch type designer and educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ITC Avant Garde</span> Sans-serif typeface

ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a geometric sans serif font family based on the logo font used in the Avant Garde magazine. Herb Lubalin devised the logo concept and its companion headline typeface, and then he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin's design firm, worked together to transform the idea into a full-fledged typeface.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Handel Gothic</span> Geometric sans-serif typeface

Handel Gothic is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1965 by Donald J. Handel (1936–2002), who worked for the graphic designer Saul Bass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern typography</span> Late 19th century unornamented style

Modern typography was a reaction against the perceived decadence of typography and design of the late 19th century. It is mostly associated with the works of Jan Tschichold and Bauhaus typographers Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Britannic (typeface)</span> Typeface

Britannic is a sans-serif typeface family that was sold in metal type by Stephenson Blake. It is a "modulated" or stressed sans-serif design, in which the vertical lines are clearly thicker than the horizontals. The Klingspor Museum reports that it was originally created by the Wagner & Schmidt foundry of Leipzig, Germany. In design it is intended for headings, advertisements and signs rather than continuous body text. Stephenson Blake advertised it as "just the right note for an advertising or display panel".

Josef Týfa was a Czech type designer. He significantly contributed to the cultivation of corporate style and the development of book design and advertising in the 1950s and 60s. Typefaces he designed include: Kolektiv, Tyfa, Juvenis, Amos and Academia, many of which he digitized with František Štorm, founder of Storm Type Foundry. He has indicated that his influences include Jaroslav Benda, Pier Luigi Nervi, and modern graphic design and architecture including functionalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goudy Sans</span> Typeface

Goudy Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Frederic Goudy around 1929–1931 and published by Lanston Monotype.

Just van Rossum is a Dutch typeface designer, software developer, and professor at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. He is the co-founder of design firm, LettError, along with Erik van Blokland. Just van Rossum is the younger brother of Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language.

References

  1. Kupferschmid, Indra (2012-01-06). "True Type of the Bauhaus". Fonts in Use. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  2. 1 2 "Herbert Bayer: creator of the Bauhaus' universal typography". Dezeen. 2018-11-06. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  3. "Bauhaus Typography". www.designhistory.org. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  4. "Tschichold's New Typography". www.designhistory.org. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  5. TypeRoom. "Jan Tschichold: the father of modern typography in his own words - TypeRoom". www.typeroom.eu. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  6. TypeRoom. "Moholy-Nagy and the New Typography: a comprehensive publication finally released - TypeRoom". www.typeroom.eu. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  7. "The New Typography". R / D. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  8. "Mt. Blanco - News - Mr. Pibb". Archived from the original on 2008-11-14. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
  9. 1 2 Uszerowicz, Monica (2018-06-19). "Unfinished Bauhaus Typefaces Are Now at Your Fingertips". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  10. "Bauhaus 93 font family" . Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  11. "Bauhaus 93 Font Free Download". Fonts Network. 2019-06-19. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  12. "Bauhaus Inspired". FontShop. Monotype Imaging. Retrieved 3 April 2021.
  13. "Six Fonts that Prove Bauhaus-Inspired Typography is Alive and Well". Eye on Design. 2019-12-06. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  14. "Hidden Treasures of the Bauhaus Dessau | Adobe Fonts". fonts.adobe.com. Archived from the original on 2019-05-06. Retrieved 2020-12-13.