Swiss Design by Smashing Magazine
Also known as International Style, the Swiss Style does not simply describe a style of graphic design made in Switzerland. It became famous through the art of very talented Swiss graphic designers, but it emerged in Russia, Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s. This style in art, architecture and culture became an 'international' style after 1950s and it was produced by artists all around the globe. Despite that, people still refer to it as the Swiss Style or the Swiss legacy.
This progressive, radical movement in graphic design is not concerned with the graphic design in Switzerland, but rather with the new style that had been proposed, attacked and defended in the 1920s in Switzerland. Keen attention to detail, precision, craft skills, system of education and technical training, a high standard of printing as well as a clear refined and inventive lettering and typoraphy laid out a foundation for a new movement that has been exported worldwide in 1960s to become an international style.
Emerging from the modernist and constructivist ideals, the Swiss Style can be defined as an authentic pursue for simplicity – the beauty in the underlines of a purpose, not beauty as a purpose in itself. The principle “form follows function” became a battle-cry of Modernist architects after the 1930s. As a consequence of this principle, most of the Swiss Style craft is devoted to the minimal elements of style such as typography and content layout rather than on textures and illustrations.
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Here are some great resources if you want to dive deep into the Swiss Style Graphic Design.
- Information about the Swiss Poster Collection at Carnegie Mellon University
- Blanka Gallery of posters and prints
- Book: Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style
- International Poster Gallery
- Josef Müller-Brockmann Flickr gallery
- Swiss Graphic Design History Flickr gallery
- International Typographic Style Flickr gallery
How the Swiss style relates to the web
This style of graphic design was born in the institutional context. The majority of pieces from this movement are in the form of posters, stamps, institutional typographical identity, street signs, etc. In this sense, these artists are leveraging much more than just top-down communication, they’re creating user-friendly interfaces.
As a result of that, Swiss Style artists tend to put their artistic efforts in that the content they are conveying delivers its intended message in a clear, unobtrusive fashion. One can make the point that they were thinking, in a broader sense, about usability long before the web even existed. How can we not learn from these great masters?
Uniformity and Geometry
Whitespace can never be underrated. It’s a very important element for both visual impact and readability. It feels quite inviting when a web page is laid out in such a fashion that the organization of the page (and the site) is clearly conveyed in a split of a second. It’s also good for business, since people use interfaces that they understand and tend reject the ones they don’t.
A common way that people pursue organization is by having markers that separate the different parts of the site: in web design icons and illustrations are used to separate various types of content. But Swiss style is all about using less, so instead of adding more elements to work with, they prefer to remove as much as possible. This is a great example of the ‘less is more’ principle and of the ‘the content is the interface’ wisdom.
Grid Systems
A grid system is a rigid framework that is supposed to help graphic designers in the meaningful, logical and consistent organization of information on a page. Rudimentary versions of grid systems existed since the medieval times, but a group of graphic designers, mostly inspired in ideas from typographical literature started building a more rigid and coherent system for page layout. The core of these ideas were first presented in the book Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann which helped to spread the knowledge about the grids thorough the world.
Nowadays grid systems are an established tool that is often used by print and web designers to create well-structured, balanced designs. There are many resources on the subject, one of them is an article by your own Smashing Magazine: Designing With Grid-Based Approach. You may want to take a closer look at it if you want to learn and find out more about grid-systems.
Read more at: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/17/lessons-from-swiss-style-graphic-design/
No comments:
Post a Comment