The German art school Bauhaus: home to the 20th century's most influential centers for design. It had a utopian desire to have a unity of artists and craftsmen work together in collaboration. Due to the Industrial Revolution, jobs turned specialized. This movement wanted a way for isolated craftsman - architects, painters, sculptors, etc... to work together again. The intention was to “breathe a soul into the dead product of the machine.” (Meggs). The Bauhaus principle is that functionality dictates form (Staff).
The Bauhaus movement, described in detail in Chapter 15 of Megg's History of Graphic Design, incorporated many design movements of Early Modern art. Wassily Kandinsky, an Expressionist, was on staff at Bauhaus. De Stijl was introduced to Bauhaus by Josef Albers.
Hungarian constructivist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s passion for typography and photography gave Bauhaus interest in visual communications. He saw graphic design evolving as “the new visual literature.” He saw Photography influencing poster design… which is largely how posters are represented nowadays in current graphic design. Photography of Early Modern art focused on pattern and structure found in the world instead of depicting objects and things. Methods of visual organization found in Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Expressionism influenced processes to peel apart and create new ideas with lenses, exposures, and printing.
The Nazi regime, which grew in the time between WW1 and WW2, did not appreciate Bauhaus as they felt it was non-traditional to Germany, even taking offense to the sans serif typefaces and not favoring traditional German font Fraktur. Eventually Bauhaus was pushed out of Germany. America & Switzerland largely absorbed the refugee artists which further influenced their own Art Deco & Swiss International movements (Kaiser).
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