Stylogenyin the style of Dada

Avant-garde · 1916–1924 · Central Europe, Western Europe

Dada

Also known as Dadaism, Berlin Dada, Merz

Born in wartime Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 and spreading to Berlin, Hanover, Cologne and Paris, Dada used chance, absurdity and provocation against the culture that had produced the war. Its journals, posters and photomontages tumbled found type, ads and photographs into anarchic compositions that treated every letter as raw material and every rule of legibility as a target.

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

01

How it works

  • Grab type from anywhere (wood poster letters, ads, printers' rules) and mix it without regard for family or hierarchy.
  • Set words in every direction: upside down, vertical, stepped and colliding.
  • Cut up photographs, advertisements and newsprint and reassemble them into absurd photomontage.
  • Let chance and provocation decide placement; deny the reader a single, comfortable entry point.
  • Parody the languages of propaganda, advertising and fine art rather than inventing a new polish.

Zurich (Cabaret Voltaire), then Berlin, Hanover, Cologne and Paris

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
Central symmetry, Modular grid, Classical text block, Authoritative & institutional, Calm & contemplative, Luxurious & glamorous

Palette

  • #ebe3cf
  • #161616
  • #c62a1e
  • #8a8174
  • #c7a76a

Typefaces

  • Found wood poster type

  • Mixed grotesques, Egyptians and Fraktur from the jobbing printer's case

  • Letters cut and pasted from newspapers and ads

    Höch, Hausmann

Known for

  • Hugo Ball & Emmy Hennings

    Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, 1916

  • Tristan Tzara

    Dada journal

  • Hannah Höch

    Cut with the Kitchen Knife, 1919–20

  • Raoul Hausmann

    optophonetic poster-poems; ABCD, 1923–24

  • John Heartfield & George Grosz

    Berlin Dada photomontage; Malik-Verlag covers

  • Kurt Schwitters

    Merz magazine, 1923–32

  • Theo van Doesburg & Kurt Schwitters

    Kleine Dada Soirée poster, 1922

03

Make something in this style

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

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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 styleDada1916–1924 · Central Europe, Western 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. Leah Dickerman (ed.), Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris (National Gallery of Art, 2005)
  2. Dawn Ades, Photomontage (Thames & Hudson, 1976)
  3. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design

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