The beginnings of the twentieth century would find itself in a time like no other; In a rapidly post-industrial environment, many Western societies would find themselves grappling with changing social structures, newly evolving technologies, and rising tensions along national lines (Meggs & Purvis, p. 269). Within this volatile era, artists and designers would start to question longstanding traditions of art and design, making waves in new forms of expression and composition (Meggs & Purvis, p. 269). Following this, many important art movements would take the Western world by storm, reconsidering the essence and conventions of art, and furthermore of graphic design.
Among the first and most prominent, the cubism movement was first spearheaded by Pablo Picasso in the early 1900s, and focused primarily on translating nature into bold, geometric planes first inspired by tribal African works (Meggs & Purvis, p. 269-270). Cubism itself can be split into two main phases with the first being analytical cubism, where artists like Picasso looked for ways planes could together compose larger images through individual textures, color, and shapes (Meggs & Purvis, p. 269-270). After Picasso, the movement would then shift to synthetic cubism, which used similar techniques to not completely replicate an image, but instead capture its essence and symbolic likeness (Meggs & Purvis, p. 270-271). Between these two focuses, graphic design and art would be pushed towards bold colors and precisely placed planes, abstracting existing environments into geometric shapes (Meggs & Purvis, p. 269-271). Accordingly, the collage would become very popular during this time, which rendered works as two-dimensional layers that come together to create visual associations (Meggs & Purvis, p. 270). Overlapping near the end of cubism, Futurism would also be another major art movement with influences in design (Meggs & Purvis, p. 271). Particularly concerned with typography, futurism aimed for revolution and unbridled, dynamic expression; Conventions such as the horizontal lines and column justification were thrown out, and in their place, typography was disjoint, sculpted, and even overlapped to evoke chaos (Meggs & Purvis, p. 271-273). Futurism would capture the speed and noise of post-industrial society using new typographic techniques, removing flourishes such as capitals, punctuation, and even proper grammar to instead leave only onomatopoeias and taglines to get their message across (Meggs & Purvis, p. 273). Other art movements would come and go as well, such as the Dadaism and Expressionism art movements respectively concerned with the contextualization and expression of art (Meggs & Purvis, p. 277,284). Dadaism, an at-times anarchic movement concerned with mocking art, society, and tradition, often used seemingly nonsensical layouts and imagery to attack conventions and question what the essence of art was (Meggs & Purvis, p. 277). It was an artistic, political, and at points ill-defined movement, and eventually led into surrealist and dream-like undertones in content and composition (Meggs & Purvis, p. 277,283). In contrast, expressionism came from a more organized approach to artistically capture not the objective physical, but the subjective emotions and anecdotes behind the subject. Born from two approaches, expressionism was centered around either abstracting an existing subject into emotional motifs, or building the emotional motifs without the intended subject in view (Meggs & Purvis, p. 284). The core and aesthetic of these movements would transcend past the arthouse into the graphic design of posters, books, covers, and other works, setting the stage for the rest of the century (Meggs & Purvis, p. 280,287-289).
It was meanwhile in the 1920s that Russian artists and poets were increasingly becoming enamored with the cubist and futurist movements, quickly adopting and combining them into one consistent cubo-futurist movement (Meggs & Purvis, p. 317). Coming just after World War I and the triumph of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, this new experimental breed of art stood in contrast to the elaborate conventions of czarist Russian, using common and coarse materials in solidarity of the poor and meager (Meggs & Purvis, p. 317). In the design sphere, the principles of the movement were adapted in a style known as suprematism, which sought to use new, abstract geometry and composition to create a sensation above all else (Meggs & Purvis, p. 319). Particularly used in propaganda, suprematism helped artists and politicians communicate with illiterate populations using only graphics to convey emotion and information (Meggs & Purvis, p. 319). The Russian art movement would then further split in 1921 with the introduction of constructivism, which pushed all artists to abandon art without a political and informational role in favor of integration in design, visual communications, and other applications (Meggs & Purvis, p. 319). Constructivism brought with it an undeniable optimism for the future of communist society, hoping to combine aesthetic and technology to immerse the Russian public in a richer environment (Meggs & Purvis, p. 319-320). With heavy inspirations in architecture, it relied primarily on geometric layers, pure colors, and heavy sans-serif typography, and would have lasting impacts on civil engineering, posters, and even film (Meggs & Purvis, p. 322,317-329). Though it was powerful and fiercely nationalistic, constructivism would die down in Russia following Stalinist purges, though not before spreading westward (Meggs & Purvis, p. 327-331).
In Germany, constructivism and the other art movements would find themselves solidified in the essence of one of the most important design schools of the modern era (Meggs & Purvis, p. 345-346). Known as Das Staatliche Bauhaus – or more simply, the Bauhaus – the school aimed to unify the technology and design of mass-production for a more beautiful, accessible society (Meggs & Purvis, p. 345). Opening in the aftermath of World War I within Weimer, Germany, the Bauhaus would have its roots in an existing fine-arts academy merged with a neighboring applied-arts university (Meggs & Purvis, p. 345). Notably, the Bauhaus would notably make no distinction between the two, and would also go on to hold equal its influences from architecture, interior design, typography, and other crafts (Meggs & Purvis, p. 346). In doing so, all art and craftsmanship were given the same background and objectives, with a central idea that ‘form follows function’ (Meggs & Purvis, p. 346-347,351). The Bauhaus’s inspiration and message would be particularly prominent in graphic design, where it would spawn a movement carefully balancing readability, composition, and aesthetics within a design (Meggs & Purvis, p. 347). Though the Bauhaus school itself avoided creating or subjecting its students to a certain style, prominent works focus around rational, geometric shapes evoking a machine-like quality with minimal flourishes to distract from its message (Meggs & Purvis, p. 346-347). Typography itself would be redesigned to express only one unique, unmistakably distinct symbol per character, with major consideration towards hierarchy, justification, and whitespace utilization for the most direct communication (Meggs & Purvis, p. 351). Followingly, photos and illustrations would often be encouraged to integrate typography within the image to impart the clearest interpretation to the viewer (Meggs & Purvis, p. 349). From this design analysis, the Bauhaus school would have impacts not just in graphic design, but in a wide range of fields from product design to visual statistics for decades to come (Meggs & Purvis, p. 353,359-360). Following difficulty with the reigning Nazi government for perceived ‘cultural Bolshevism’, the Bauhaus would move from Weimer to Dessau to eventually Berlin, closing its doors in 1933 (Meggs & Purvis, p. 349,353). After its fourteen year lifespan, its members and proponents would find themselves migrating to allied Europe and America, where they spread the message and core of the Bauhaus internationally (Meggs & Purvis, p. 352-353).