Style combination · Contrasts

German Book Art Movement × Die Neue Typographie

From the mid-1920s the Bauhaus and the New Typography took over the avant-garde of the book; centred hand-press pages against asymmetric sans-serif layouts make a clear old-against-new tension.

From the research on German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)

Mix them and make something German Book Art Movement Die Neue Typographie

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Die Neue Typographie, their arrangement from Die Neue Typographie, the finish from German Book Art Movement. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung) Die Neue Typographie

Type from German Book Art Movement: Humanist & Garalde serif
Blackletter

Die Neue Typographie avoids blackletter: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Colour from Die Neue Typographie: Limited spot colours
Monochrome
Form from Die Neue Typographie: Rectilinear
Geometric primitives
Composition from Die Neue Typographie: Dynamic asymmetry
Generous white space

German Book Art Movement avoids dynamic asymmetry: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Surface from German Book Art Movement: Paper & letterpress bite
Carved line

The type

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

Display · German Book Art Movement

Rise

UnifrakturMaguntia; German Book Art Movement used Behrens-Schrift (Peter Behrens, Gebr. Klingspor, 1902; semibold 1901), followed by Behrens-Antiqua and Behrens-Kursiv and Ehmcke-Antiqua and Ehmcke-Kursiv (Flinsch, 1908–1910; the Antiqua is dated 1908 or 1909/10) and Ehmcke-Fraktur

Text · Die Neue Typographie

The programme that turned avant-garde experiment into a functional typographic method, named by Moholy-Nagy in 1923 and codified in Jan Tschichold's 'elementare typographie' (1925) and Die neue Typographie (1928). It demanded asymmetric layouts, sans-serif type, standard paper formats, photography and active white space, all justified by clarity of communication, and spread through the Ring neue Werbegestalter and designers from Delft to Prague.

Jost; Die Neue Typographie used Futura and Akzidenz-Grotesk

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Die Neue Typographie, with a counter-accent from German Book Art Movement. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung) Die Neue Typographie

#f3efe4 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#d32a1f accent · 18%
#7d7a73 accent · 14%
#c9b68c accent · 10%
#3f5a6e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3efe4;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #d32a1f;
  --accent-2: #7d7a73;
  --accent-3: #c9b68c;
  --accent-4: #3f5a6e;
  --font-display: "UnifrakturMaguntia", serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung): Fraktur carries political weight in German-speaking countries: the Nazi regime pushed it as the German script in its first years before banning it in January 1941 (see the blackletter-fraktur caution). Several of the movement's presses and artists were active up to the 1933 seizure of power, after which Harry Graf Kessler of the Cranach-Presse never returned to Germany. Check how a Fraktur page or a 'German book art' label will read, especially for anything national or political.

The two styles

1895–1933 · Central Europe German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung) The German reform of the book, from the magazine Pan (1895) to the private presses that ended around 1933. After Morris's Kelmscott Press, artists, printers and publishers treated a book as one work in which text, type, illustration, paper, presswork and binding agree. A Jugendstil start of floral borders and Beardsley-like drawing gave way, from about 1900, to a typographic phase: artist-drawn romans and Frakturen, hand-press printing on handmade paper, and drawn titles and woodcut initials as the only ornament. After 1918 illustration returned, as at the Cranach-Presse.

Bold lowercase lettering reads “higher together” above a stylised black and grey elevated structure whose repeating supports recede toward the lower left. A large red disc sits behind its rising diagonal edge on a cream background.

1923–1940 · Central Europe, Western Europe Die Neue Typographie The programme that turned avant-garde experiment into a functional typographic method, named by Moholy-Nagy in 1923 and codified in Jan Tschichold's 'elementare typographie' (1925) and Die neue Typographie (1928). It demanded asymmetric layouts, sans-serif type, standard paper formats, photography and active white space, all justified by clarity of communication, and spread through the Ring neue Werbegestalter and designers from Delft to Prague.