Title: Max Bill
Description: The book at hand offers a comprehensive view into an area of work from Max Bill that has so far received little attention: typography, advertising and book design. One discovers Max Bill as the tireless creator of highly individual types and commercial logos as well as a designer with a sense of visual humor – not exactly a common aspect of constructive design in this country. Bill pursued two opposing principles and accordingly left behind two lines in his work: a graphic one and a sculptural one. Taking Herbert Bayer’s universal type as a point of departure, Bill developed two lettering schemes for the Neubühl housing development and the firm “wohnbedarf”, which departed from all then-known forms. The reason for the stretched “o” in “wohnbedarf” may well have been grounded on how one perceives the text from the side; yet, behind this understanding lie formal ideas and the reductionist concept of the Bauhaus.
Subjects: Commercial art, Criticism and interpretation, History, Advertising layout and typography, Computer graphics, Catalogues raisonnés
Places: Switzerland
People: Max Bill (1908-)
Time periods: 20th century