Tag: Max Bill

• Design as a morality of form

  

  What had Jan Tschichold and his adversary Max Bill in common? Both equated form with morality. During design’s high modernist phase, it was usual to talk about form in terms of morality, personal but, above all, civic. Good form was a moral and not so much a political objective. On the old form/content divide, politics…

  Mário Moura

  January 25, 2022

  Design, Design Deontology, Design History, Formalism, politics of design

  Jan Tschichold, Kant, Max Bill, The Form of the Book

• Max Bill’s Form

  

  I love my copy of Max Bill’s Form, its cloth-bound cover covered in old age spots. A previous owner cut and glued the incredible dust cover on the paste-down endpaper. It was affordable though not cheap, a utilitarian purchase. Many modernist designers believe they can determine an object’s meaning and use once and for all.…

  Mário Moura

  January 21, 2022

  Design, Design History, Formalism, functionalism

  Form, International al Typographic Style, Max Bill, Swiss Style

• Modern Swiss Architecture – Max Bill

  

  Perhaps the most salient feature of being a teacher, researcher, and curator in graphic design history is dealing with images from Philip Meggs, «A History of Graphic Design» – the closest equivalent to a material embodiment of the discipline’s canon. Over the years, I found myself looking for the artifacts that appeared on those pages,…

  Mário Moura

  January 19, 2022

  Criticism, Design, Design History, Formalism

  Concrete Art, Concrete Poetry, International Typographic Style, Max Bill, Philip Meggs, Robin Kinross, Swiss Design, Wolfgang Weingart