Stylogeny combining Bauhaus × Memphis Design

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Style combination · Contrasts

Bauhaus × Memphis Design

Memphis parodied Bauhaus primaries and solids; compare them to decide whether geometry should be earnest or ironic.

From the research on Bauhaus

Mix them and make something Bauhaus Memphis Design

gridBauhaus × Memphis Design1919 · 1981
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Memphis Design, their arrangement from Bauhaus, the finish from Bauhaus. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

01

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Bauhaus Memphis Design

Type from Bauhaus
Colour from Memphis Design
Form from Memphis Design
Composition from Bauhaus
Surface from Bauhaus

02

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Bauhaus

Grid

Jost, standing in for Herbert Bayer's Universal alphabet (1925)

Text · Bauhaus

The German school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 moved from Expressionist craft ideals to a programme of 'art and technology' after 1923, when Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt made its printing and advertising workshops a laboratory for functional communication. Its graphics combine geometric sans-serif and lowercase type, bold rules, primary colours and basic shapes with photography in asymmetric, systematic layouts.

Jost; Bauhaus used Herbert Bayer's Universal alphabet and Josef Albers's stencil and combination alphabets

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Memphis Design, with a counter-accent from Bauhaus. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Bauhaus Memphis Design

  • #ffd23f ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #ff5a36 accent · 18%
  • #d7261e accent · 14%
  • #2ec4b6 accent · 10%
  • #1c4f9c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffd23f;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #ff5a36;
  --accent-2: #d7261e;
  --accent-3: #2ec4b6;
  --accent-4: #1c4f9c;
  --font-display: "Jost", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

04

The two styles

1919–1933 · Central Europe Bauhaus The German school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 moved from Expressionist craft ideals to a programme of 'art and technology' after 1923, when Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt made its printing and advertising workshops a laboratory for functional communication. Its graphics combine geometric sans-serif and lowercase type, bold rules, primary colours and basic shapes with photography in asymmetric, systematic layouts. A dense geometric pattern on a pink background combines turquoise polka-dot triangles, yellow squares with black dashes, blue circles with yellow sprinkles, orange-red zigzags, and scattered squiggles and small shapes. Bold black offset shapes give many motifs a shadowed, layered appearance. 1981–1988 · Southern Europe Memphis Design The Milan collective founded by Ettore Sottsass, whose furniture, laminates and objects (first shown in September 1981) became a graphic language of their own. Clashing colours, speckles, squiggles, zigzags and primitive geometric shapes were combined with deliberate bad taste, mocking modernist good form while quoting 1950s kitsch, Pop and Art Deco.

05

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