Stylogenyin the style of Bauhaus

Avant-garde · 1919–1933 · Central Europe

Bauhaus

Also known as Staatliches Bauhaus, Bauhaus typography

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.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

01

How it works

  • Build compositions from elementary forms (circle, square, triangle) paired with primary colours.
  • Set type in sans-serif and, following Bayer, drop capitals wherever possible.
  • Use bold rules, bars and dots to structure and direct the eye, never to decorate.
  • Prefer photography and 'typophoto', the fusion of type and photograph, over drawn illustration.
  • Arrange elements asymmetrically with strong scale contrast on orthogonal or rotated axes.
  • Design for industrial production: standard DIN formats, repeatable systems, legibility at a distance.

Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, Germany

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Floral & vegetal, Abundant decoration, Blackletter, Ornamented display, Script, Central symmetry, Nostalgic & retro

Palette

  • #f2efe6
  • #121212
  • #d7261e
  • #f2c12e
  • #1c4f9c
  • #8f8f8a

Typefaces

  • Herbert Bayer's Universal alphabet

    1925

  • Josef Albers's stencil and combination alphabets

    1926–31

  • Futura

    Paul Renner, 1927

Known for

  • Walter Gropius

    founder, 1919

  • László Moholy-Nagy

    Bauhausbücher series, 1925–30

  • Herbert Bayer

    Universal alphabet, 1925; Kandinsky 60th-birthday exhibition poster, 1926

  • Joost Schmidt

    Bauhaus exhibition poster, 1923

  • Josef Albers

    stencil lettering, 1926

  • bauhaus magazine

    1926–31

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Bauhaus’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleBauhaus1919–1933 · Central Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Magdalena Droste, Bauhaus 1919–1933 (Taschen)
  2. László Moholy-Nagy, 'Die neue Typographie', in Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar 1919–1923 (1923)
  3. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.