Typog­ra­phy / Com­mer­cial design

Ear­ly on Willi Baumeis­ter caused a stir as a typog­ra­ph­er and com­mer­cial design­er. In the 1920s and ear­ly 1930s, he con­tributed a great deal to the devel­op­ment of typog­ra­phy and com­mer­cial art in Ger­many and Europe, not only though his prac­ti­cal works, but also through his the­o­ret­i­cal writ­ings. These can be traced through­out three and a half decades of his work. Even so, these fields of activ­i­ty were under­es­ti­mat­ed and dis­re­gard­ed until long after his death.

Direct­ly after his return from World War I he made a name for him­self not only as a painter, but also as a typog­ra­ph­er, in addi­tion to work­ing as a stage design­er for Stuttgart the­aters, wall design­er, tex­tile and inte­ri­or design­er, even as a col­or design­er of dance cafes and house exte­ri­ors. In 1948 he wrote his friend and biog­ra­ph­er Eduar­do Wes­t­er­dahl: “I always had two activ­i­ties, 1. typog­ra­phy, poster, stage, tex­tile designs, and so on, 2. fine art with which I could con­sis­tent­ly make mod­ern art with­out com­pro­mis­es or con­ces­sions.“

Baumeis­ter con­sid­ered it impor­tant to not pit com­mer­cial art and the High Arts against each oth­er. Up to the end he also encour­aged his stu­dents to abol­ish the old ten­sion between ‘free’ and ‘applied’ Art. For him, typog­ra­phy also always pos­sessed painter­ly ele­ments. Espe­cial­ly in the ear­ly years, but after 1945, too, he gave reign to his delight in these painter­ly qual­i­ties and by no means lim­it­ed him­self to one type­face even if he favored the Goth­ic type.

Exper­i­men­tal Begin­nings

The 1919 poster for the Stuttgart “Üecht-Group” exhi­bi­tion illus­trates the rad­i­cal break with an old, exist­ing writ­ing and adver­tis­ing cul­ture: text and pic­ture inter­pen­e­trate one anoth­er as if Baumeis­ter want­ed to ring in the start of a new era with these media. Here he joined a series of many illus­tra­tors, such as Wal­ter Dex­el, Johannes Molzahn, and Kurt Schwit­ters.

These ear­ly works up to around 1924 still appear thor­ough­ly exper­i­men­tal. The designs for the ‘Deutsches The­ater’ and the ‘Sturm’ exhi­bi­tion should also be men­tioned here. Indi­vid­ual let­ters take on for­mal ele­ments. In the poster for the ‘Stuttgarter Neues Tag­blatt’ around 1925, planes are com­posed fig­u­ra­tive­ly sim­i­lar to his con­struc­tivist easel paint­ings of those years. Lat­er, par­al­lels between his com­mer­cial graph­ics and paint­ing can hard­ly be found.

Giv­ing Form to the Every­day Objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and the 1927 Weis­senhof Exhi­bi­tion

In the mid 1920s, though, Baumeis­ter rapid­ly switched to an indi­vid­u­al­is­tic ten­den­cy toward objec­ti­fi­ca­tion toward a func­tion­al typog­ra­phy that among oth­er things led to his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Stuttgart Werk­bund Exhi­bi­tion ‘Die Woh­nung’ (The Dwelling) of 1927 with the famous Weis­senhof­sied­lung (Weis­senhof Estate). The mul­ti­form print­ed mat­ter that Baumeis­ter pro­duced for it demon­strates his typo­graph­i­cal and adver­tis­ing design abil­i­ties and his high stan­dards, which he under­scored at the time with a num­ber of com­men­taries and pub­li­ca­tions.

Around this time, he also emerged with numer­ous arti­cles and lec­tures to pro­mote the estab­lish­ment of new aes­thet­ic norms. Anal­o­gous to the aims of not only the Werk­bund, but also the Bauhaus, Willi Baumeis­ter devel­oped into one of the chief pro­tag­o­nists of a New objec­tiv­i­ty (Neue Sach­lichkeit) typog­ra­phy. Because the union of art (or more pre­cise­ly, design) and every­day life was one of the main aspects of the Weis­senhof Exhi­bi­tion, Baumeis­ter’s designs let­ter­head and invi­ta­tion forms, adhe­sive stamps, envelopes, adver­tise­ments, and brochures were a high­point in the devel­op­ment of func­tion-dri­ven graph­ics. The exhi­bi­tion booths that he designed for indi­vid­ual firms are mod­el doc­u­ments of a new typog­ra­phy because the plac­ard-style inscrip­tion was the most impor­tant ele­ment of their com­po­si­tion and effect. Nev­er before had Baumeis­ter been able to prove him­self with­in the design of com­mer­cial graph­ics as dur­ing this exhi­bi­tion.

Pro­fes­sor­ship in Frank­furt am Main 1928

In 1927 Baumeis­ter was one of the co-founders of the avant-garde Cir­cle of New Com­mer­cial Design­ers (ring neue wer­begestal­ter) with Kurt Schwit­ters and Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy, among oth­ers, that prop­a­gat­ed a num­ber of ele­men­tary design prin­ci­ples. Above all, how­ev­er, his Stuttgart suc­cess led to a pro­fes­sor­ship at the Civic Applied Art School (Städelschule) in Frank­furt am Main begin­ning sum­mer semes­ter 1928. In con­trast to his lat­er teach­ing activ­i­ty, Baumeis­ter was not engaged as a painter here, but taught in the area of com­mer­cial graph­ics, typog­ra­phy, and fab­ric print­ing.

This peri­od entailed many new tasks and oblig­a­tions, so that lit­tle oppor­tu­ni­ty remained for his own graph­ic works. Among the most impor­tant works of these years were the title and type­face of the peri­od­i­cal ‘The New Frank­furt’ (Das Neue Frank­furt) lat­er ‘The New City (die neue stadt) found­ed by Ernst May and banned in 1933. Here, Baumeis­ter’s hand­writ­ing is clear­ly rec­og­niz­able among the con­trast­ing, par­tial­ly col­laged com­bi­na­tion of pho­tographs, text, and col­or planes.

Baumeis­ter’s role as an instruc­tor becomes clear­er when we real­ize that he saw mod­ern typog­ra­phy not as some­thing sub­jec­tive, but ulti­mate­ly as some­thing nor­ma­tive. In 1926 he pub­lished the essay ‘New Typog­ra­phy’ (Neue Typogra­phie) in the jour­nal ‘The Form’ (Die Form). There he men­tioned Fer­nand Léger and Le Cor­busier as elec­tive rel­a­tives and stat­ed: “Typog­ra­phy is ulti­mate­ly based on the divi­sion of a dis­crete sur­face. The typog­ra­ph­er faces […] the same task as the painter. The basic prin­ci­ples of sur­face dis­tri­b­u­tion are dif­fer­ent. The print­ed page con­tains pic­to­r­i­al and com­mu­nica­tive com­po­nents. In the poster, the pic­to­r­i­al pre­dom­i­nates. In typog­ra­phy, the com­mu­nica­tive is to be giv­en form pic­to­ri­al­ly […].“

But his teach­ing posi­tion increas­ing­ly suf­fered from the polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances and a num­ber of attacks from the Frank­furt press. With the begin­ning of the Nazi regime Willi Baumeis­ter was informed with­out expla­na­tion on March 31, 1933 that his future teach­ing activ­i­ty was being refused.

Baumeis­ter was cer­tain­ly con­sid­ered ‘degen­er­ate’ now, but ini­tial­ly not imposed with a ban on prac­tic­ing his pro­fes­sion. Thus his activ­i­ty as a com­mer­cial artist did not end with the dis­missal. Up to 1936 he com­plet­ed numer­ous com­mis­sions that show he was not ready to make any com­pro­mis­es.

Find addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion under Baumeis­ter as Instruc­tor.

The Wup­per­tal Years 1939–1944

Dur­ing the war years over­shad­owed by doubt and eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty between 1939 and 1944, Baumeis­ter like Oskar Schlem­mer was engaged in the study, research, and explo­ration of paint­ing tech­niques at the Dr. Kurt Her­berts Paint­ing Tech­ni­cal School in Wup­per­tal. The Her­berts enam­el fac­to­ry was ulti­mate­ly the Cam­ou­flage that enabled some artists to con­tin­ue paint­ing away from crit­i­cal obser­va­tion.

Baumeis­ter’s activ­i­ty chiefly con­sist­ed of giv­ing graph­ic and edi­to­r­i­al form to pub­li­ca­tions under Her­berts’ author­ship and sup­ply­ing them with pic­tures, some of which came although anony­mous­ly from Baumeis­ter him­self. He gave essen­tial char­ac­ter to two pub­li­ca­tions in par­tic­u­lar: ‘Mod­u­la­tion und Pati­na’ of 1944, on whose cov­er a pasty appli­ca­tion of put­ty appears, and Borne from Paint­ing Tech­nique of 1943–44, which depicts part of a Chi­nese scroll pic­ture.

The Applied Arts After 1945

Baumeis­ter remained loy­al to typog­ra­phy even after the end of World War II despite his grow­ing rep­u­ta­tion as a painter of inter­na­tion­al rank, and despite his oblig­a­tions as a col­lege instruc­tor.

He reg­u­lar­ly designed exhi­bi­tion posters and dust jack­ets along­side print­ed mate­ri­als. He also turned atten­tion to stage design. He no longer pro­duced designs for the shop win­dows, fair booths, let­ter­head, or adver­tis­ing that had made him famous in the 1920s, but, in that sort of total­i­ty that did not chose between the arts, he nonethe­less remained com­mit­ted to the Bauhaus idea.
Clear­ly rec­og­niz­able is that Baumeis­ter post-1945 typog­ra­phy grew play­ful or freer again. The (paint­ed or drawn) pic­ture dom­i­nates in exhi­bi­tion posters and book cov­ers, and in con­trast to the works of 1919, the alpha­bet­ic char­ac­ters do not devel­op a life of their own. And as is under­stand­able after the dif­fi­cult years: in this free­dom of design, Willi Baumeis­ter’s func­tion-dri­ven graph­ics and paint­ings again come very close to one anoth­er!

Baumeis­ter 35-year-long work in the field of com­mer­cial graph­ics holds its own next to the paint­ing. Not just in his role as painter was the artist was a pio­neer for sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions. Also in the applied arts and in deal­ing with type­face, word, and sign he quite lit­er­al­ly helped shape the 20th cen­tu­ry.
In fall 1989 on the occa­sion of a Stuttgart Acad­e­my of Fine Arts exhi­bi­tion com­mem­o­rat­ing his 100th birth­day, the cat­a­logue ‘Typogra­phie und Reklamegestal­tung’ (Typog­ra­phy and Adver­tis­ing Design, see lit­er­a­ture) appeared. Wolf­gang Ker­mer’s intro­duc­tion and Heinz Spiel­man­n’s essay served as the bases for the text on this page.