Originating from a merger of art and design in Switzerland in the early 20th Century, the International Style spread from there, the Netherlands and Germany to Russia and beyond from the 1920’s moving forward. I really like the clean, geometric style, especially today with contemporary art being an overload of effects, glows, gradients and various other eyecandy. I like plenty of that but it is refreshing to see creativity through more stark, refined design and, in the spirit of appreciating what came before, while also recognizing that we still find examples of these clean forms today, I wanted to show examples. Obviously this is a huge subject and I won’t make any attempt to create a comprehensive overview, just a few samples that I personally like.
Basic Typography – Ruedi Ruegg/Godi Frohlich 1972. This one is great because it has a field of color on the left and then the forms enter negative space, defined by type on the right. It’s beautiful. I can appreciate work like this without bells and whistles because it is like two-dimensional architecture. Next time you are at the airport or the mall or wherever and you see a sign, think of the glyphs as 2D architecture. As a designer you can learn to see the whole world like that, just as with CG, being based on geometric primitives, you learn to see that everything around in real life is made up of geometric primitives.
Geigy. To a typical consumer this kind of design is invisible, but that’s not the only reason it is good. To me the layers of color and columns of type create structure and harmony. There are entire worlds in these simple shapes and colors. The type on the can, in the blue field, is smaller, but that is balanced by the white on top with the larger type and anchored by the larger type on the bottom. On the right, the box in blue, white and yellow, that is really nice. I was really inspired by this type of work in my early experiments, I liked the idea of creating different fields of color to define space.
Below: Poster designed by Brian Leuck, Kayo Takasugi, design firm of Grady, Campbell, Inc. for Novum
Another feature of some of the IS is an appreciation of non-perpendicular angles. I personally like the angles better on a more vertical space, but with the Kraftwerk designs it was limited to the confines of the shapes of LP production. But if you scroll back up and look you’ll see that vertical space is really appreciated. Obviously horizontal space is good and more contemporary with digital/media/computer/mobile concerns with the aspect ratio. I suppose, personally, anything avoiding square is optimal.
Modern use of grids was a growing and important part of IS.
These ideas can be found in the book Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann, who is a prominent figure in IS.
In fact in the above three examples you see the vertical space, evidence of grid systems, colored blocks and angles. Below are two by some guy named Eric Chamberlain. I have no clue who he is.
A lot of this style is centered around type. Whatever visual elements beyond type exist are often geometric in nature, and the type itself is used as a geometric object. The grids, when used, and color fields, all support geometry. That can be the focus itself, or it is all foundation for the typography. Of course as the style grew it utilized more elements, photographs, variants in geometric form etc. Graphis diagrams:
I’ve been working on design, illustration and graphics work for a long time and one of the things I appreciate the most is this kind of simplicity and order in readability in design, yet almost limitless potential for what can be created. As with anything that has conventions, the International Style has in some cases grown beyond its original ideas and limitations as designers color outside of the lines, so to speak. I say “limitations” in a good way, with the idea that art or design is actually defined by its limitations and what makes a discipline unique, and not in a bad way.
Of course typography is a universe by itself in regard to the International Style. The above piece, a poster for Wim Crouwel and the film Helvetica bringing this to light. I would recommend finding it online somewhere and checking it out.
Eric Chamberlain 