What is Modernism?

Starting in the late 19th, early 20th century, modernism was a pivotal art movement accross all art forms, particularly graphic design. Due to the increasing popularity and importance of machines in all forms of industry, artists where forced to change the way they work. While this scared painters and regular artists into become far more adventurous and abstract, to try and set themselves apart from the more and more accessable ways of creating photographic imamery, it worked strongly with graphic designers and allowed them to completely revolutionise the way they worked. The ability to mass produce work was a huge boon for graphic designers and subsequently, the machines themselves became a key aspect of a lot of the works of art, and their uniform and reliable nature was strongly reflected in the artworks of the time and key to the strong belief around all modernist design that ‘Form should follow function’.

Prior to the foundation of modernism, all artworks of the time where far too overly decorated and complicated, as designers where eager to fill every inch of space available with their designs. While some artists, such as Alphonse Mucha, where able to create beautiful, timeless pieces of art like this, a lot of designers where just left with an over complicated and disorganised mess on the page, which didn’t serve it’s purpose of advertisement.

It was Josef Müller-Brockmann who’s grid system was hugely pivotal and influential on the design style of the  era. due to his designs, all work started adhearing to strict grids and guides and started to emphasise the value and importance of negative space and the white page, as opposed to trying to fit as much in as possible. 

This all tied into the modernist principles which stood strongly against commercialism, greed, and, most importantly, the cheapness of the designs at the time.
While many people played their part in the development of the modernist movement, none were more important than the founders of the Bauhaus school of design.
Founded by Walter

Gropius in 1919, in the german town of Weimar, Bauhaus is arguably, to this day, still the most revolutionary art school in history. Almost all modernist design and architecture, and even the first Sans Serif fonts, such as Futura (being used in this work), where invented there. Almost every one of it’s tutors could be viewed as a revolutionary in their field and it was there that modernism was truly born. Throughout this research document, I will be looking at almost every one of the key Baushaus professors and analysing their specific role in the development of the modernist era.
Modernism primary goal was that the design should be derived from the fuction, and that it’s subsequent aesthetic appearance should be universally accepted.