Peter
Behrens, a German artist, architect, and designer played a major role in the
evolution of design during the first decade of the 20th century. He was concerned
with the relationships of art and design forms to social, technical, and
cultural conditions and believed, after architecture, typography was “the most
characteristic picture of a period,“ and “the strongest testimonial of the
spiritual progress and development of a people.“ He experimented with typography
in a deliberate attempt to express the spirit of a new era. He sought
typographic reform and was one of the earliest advocates of sans-serif
typography. German typographic historian Hans Loubier believed his booklet Celebration
of Life and Art: A Consideration of the Theater as the Highest Symbol of a
Culture may represent the
first use of sans-serif type as running book text.
Akidenz
Grotesque, a sans-serif typeface designed by the Berthold Foundry. Ten
variations were designed: four weights, three expanded, and three condensed
versions, which allowed compositors to achieve contrast and emphasis with just
one family of typefaces. The formation of this unified and systemized type family,
achieving harmony and clarity and also inspiring the design for many more
sans-serif typefaces, was a major step in typographic design. Behrenschrift,
inspired by Akidenz Grotesque, was Peter Behrens’ first typeface, released and
manufactured by the Klingspore Foundry, created a uniquely German type by
combining the heavy, condensed form of Blackletter, the proportions of Roman
inscriptions and his standardized letterform construction. Behrensschrift was
an attempt to reduce any poetic flourish marking the forms as work by an individual
hand, making them more universal.
J.
L. Mathieu Lauweriks, a Dutch architect who was fascinated by geometric form
and developed an approach to teaching design based on geometric composition.
His grids began with a square circumscribed around a circle; numerous
permutations could be made by subdividing and duplicating this basic structure.
Peter Behrens was greatly influenced by his work when Lauweriks joined the
faculty of Düssledorf in 1904.
The Deutsche Werkbund , founded in 1907, advocated a marriage
of art and technology. The group’s leaders, including Peter Behrens, Hermann
Muthesius, Henry van de Velde, were influenced by William Morris and the
English Arts and Crafts movement, but with significant differences. Morris was repulsed by the products of the
machine age and advocated a return to medieval craftsmanship in protest against
the industrial revolution, while the Werkbund recognized the value of machines
and advocated design as a way to give form and meaning to all machine-made
things, including buildings. A new
philosophy called Gesamkultur, defined as a new universal culture
exiting in a totally reformed man-made environment, was strongly advocated by
this group. Design was seen as an engine to propel society forward towards
achieving Gesamkultur. Soon
after the creation of the Werkbund two factions emerged, one of them headed by
Muthesius, argued that the standardization of design for industrial efficiency
would maximize the use of mechanical manufacturing. The other faction, led by Van
de Velde argued for the importance of individual artistic impression. Behrens
attempted to create a synthesis of these two extremes although his work for AEG
shows that he had a tendency to follow the ideals of standardization more
often.
His
work for AEG was an early manifestation of these ideals, clearly visible in his
guidebook covers for the1908 German Shipbuilding Exhibition. He also created a
typeface for exclusive use by the AEG bringing further unification of their
printed materials. Berhens Antiqua was inspired by classical Roman lettering
differentiated AEG communications material from all other printed material. It
was universal in its forms, evoking a sense of quality and performance. The
grid system created by Lauwerik and implemented by Behrens in much of his work
for AEG adds further unification to the image of the organization.
These
ideals also echoed in his designs for many manufactured products. These designs
led many to refer to him as the first industrial designer. In his design for an
electric teakettle he implemented the use of standardization that allowed for
many different possibilities of variations in the design with simple forms,
stripped of ornamentation and connotations of social class and wealth.
Designing not only the teakettle but also the catalog page for them created a
unification of elements transcending industrial design into graphic design. This
is also shown in the design of arc lamps and the printed materials used to
advertise them.
