Typography

Vanessa Henao

Design Seminar

De Stijl

            

                                                Typography and Advertising 

De Stijl started as a group of artist and architects in 1917. The new technologies were reflected on art by the idea of functionalism which is how to make an artwork comfort and practical for audiences. They express their ideas using only very basic shapes along with orthogonal lines and primary colors, without any hint of self-expression.

 Jan Tschichold ultimately achieved the greatest impact through his writing. His 1928 outline for a ''new typography'' (Die Neue Typographie) was a foundational text and is still read and used. His design principles swept away the muddle earlier commercial approaches and demanded typography that was streamlined,modern and elegant in its sans-serif standards.

Several commercial posters were produced by De Stijl artists and Advertised. Bart van der Leck did a poster in 1919 for Delft Salad Oil Factories. In this poster he depicts a male figure through very basic geometrical shapes, using only black and primary colors. The radical abstract reduction was also applied to the text.

In the field of book design, De Stijl had several interesting contributions. One of them was a book cover designed in 1925. The Design was considered as a pure representation of  De Stijl. Two orthogonal black bars covered with white type are dividing the space into four different-size rectangles, maintaing  asymmetrical composition with flat primary areas of red yellow, blue and white.

Theo Van Doesburg did his poster of International Exhibition of Cubist and Neo-Cubists in 1920. Where he developed an alphabet creating a unique text. He used an orthogonal structure to build up the letter as well as the whole composition, on the other hand that distortion of letters. Asymmetrical balanced layout was given more energy of harmony and contrast by juxtaposition of the different letter thickness.