- Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer (1900 – 1985) was an
Austria ngraphic design er, painter, photographer, andarchitect .Bayer apprenticed under the artist
Georg Schmidthammer inLinz . Leaving the workshop to study at theDarmstadt Artists' Colony , he became interested inWalter Gropius 'sBauhaus manifesto . After Bayer had studied for four years at theBauhaus under such teachers asWassily Kandinsky andLászló Moholy-Nagy , Gropius appointed Bayer director ofprinting andadvertising .In the spirit of reductive minimalism, Bayer developed a crisp visual style and adopted use of all-lowercase,
sans serif typeface s for most Bauhaus publications. Bayer is one of several typographers of the period includingKurt Schwitters andJan Tschichold who experimented with the creation of a simplified more phonetic-based alphabet. Bayer designed the 1925 geometric sans-serif typeface called "universal," [http://www.papress.com/thinkingwithtype/teachers/type_lecture/history_bayer.htm] now issued in digital form asBayer Universal . [http://www.p22.com/products/bauhaus.html] The design also inspiredITC Bauhaus andArchitype Bayer , which bears comparison with the stylistically related typefaceArchitype Schwitters .In 1928, Bayer left the Bauhaus to become
art director ofVogue magazine 'sBerlin office. He remained in Germany far later than most other progressives, and did work for the Nazi Party. In 1936 he designed a brochure for the Deutschland Ausstellung, an exhibition for tourists in Berlin during the 1936 Olympic Games - the brochure celebrated life in theThird Reich , and the authority of Hitler. In 1938 he left Germany and settled inNew York City where he had a long and distinguished career in nearly every aspect of the graphic arts. In 1944 Bayer married Joella Syrara Haweis, the daughter of poetMina Loy .In 1946 the Bayers relocated. Hired by industrialist and visionary
Walter Paepcke , Bayer moved toAspen, Colorado as Paepcke promoted skiing as a popular sport. Bayer's architectural work in the town included co-designing theAspen Institute and restoring theWheeler Opera House , but his production of promotional posters identified skiing with wit, excitement, and glamour. Bayer would remain associated with Aspen until the mid-1970s. Bayer gave theDenver Art Museum a collection of around 8,000 of his works.In 1959, he designed his "fonetik alfabet", a
phonetic alphabet , for English. It was sans-serif and without capital letters. He had special symbols for the endings "-ed", "-ory", "-ing", and "-ion", as well as the digraphs "ch", "sh", and "ng". An underline indicated the doubling of a consonant in traditional orthography.Bayer's works appear in prominent public and private collections including the MIT List Visual Arts Center.
ee also
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List of Austrian artists and architects External links
[http://www.herbertbayer.org Herbert Bayer Web Site]
[http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1975/?id=281 Art Directors Club bio and portrait of Herbert Bayer]
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