Max Bill: Typography, Advertising, Book Design

FLEISCHMANN, GERD, H. R. BOSSHARD, & C. BIGNENS

ISBN 10: 3721203410 / ISBN 13: 9783721203417

Published by Arthur Niggli, Switzerland, 1999

About this Item

First edition. 4to; 304 pp.; illustrated from photographs and drawings. A fine copy in original white cloth in a fine dust jacket. A monograph on the Swiss designer's work in typography, advertising, and book design from 1925 to the 1980s. The first volume in the projected series of the Complete Work of Max Bill. Text in English and German.

Seller Inventory # 009351

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Max Bill: Typography, Advertising, Book Design
• Publisher: Arthur Niggli, Switzerland
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3721203410
• ISBN 13: 9783721203417
• Binding: Hardcover
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art
  • Books About Books

About this title

Synopsis

Max Bill was active in nearly every area of art and design, which were universal concepts for him. Furthermore, his theoretical publications have turned him into one of the most fruitful stimulators of Modern Concrete Art in post-war Europe among the Bauhaus generation of students. This volume offers a comprehensive view into an area of his work that has so far received little attention: typography, advertising and book design. It shows for that almost everything that the Swiss Avantgarde movement accomplished during the 1930s was visualized in Bill’s studio “bill-zürich reklame”. The reader discovers Max Bill as the tireless creator of highly individual types, commercial logos and advertisements as well as an exceedingly versatile designer who had an amazing command of “visual humor”.

From the Back Cover

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.