Typography. Advertising. Book Design.
304 pages, 23 x 28 cm, hardcover (English)
ISBN: 978-3-7212-0341-7
The book at hand offers a comprehensive view into an area of work from Max Bill that has so far received little attention: typography, advertising and book design. One discovers Max Bill as the tireless creator of highly individual types and commercial logos as well as a designer with a sense of visual humor – not exactly a common aspect of constructive design in this country.
Bill pursued two opposing principles and accordingly left behind two lines in his work: a graphic one and a sculptural one. Taking Herbert Bayer’s universal type as a point of departure, Bill developed two lettering schemes for the Neubühl housing development and the firm “wohnbedarf”, which departed from all then-known forms. The reason for the stretched “o” in “wohnbedarf” may well have been grounded on how one perceives the text from the side; yet, behind this understanding lie formal ideas and the reductionist concept of the Bauhaus.
With texts by Gerd Fleischmann, Hans Rudolf Bosshard and Christoph Bignens.