Description
The chart is an interactive lineage map. International Typographic Style sits at the center, on a timeline that runs from older movements at the top to newer ones at the bottom. The movements that influenced it appear above it, any parallel movements it developed alongside sit on its own row, and the movements it later influenced appear below. Every line is a real, cited connection between two movements: a solid line is an influence historians broadly agree on, and a dashed line is an indirect, parallel, or contested link.
For International Typographic Style (1950s – 1960s), it traces two movements that shaped it, all well-established links: Bauhaus and De Stijl.
The International Typographic Style is a systemic approach to graphic design that emerged during the 1930s–1950s but continued to develop internationally. It is considered the basis of the Swiss style. It expanded on and formalized the modernist typographic innovations of the 1920s that emerged in part out of art movements such as Constructivism (Russia), De Stijl (The Netherlands) and at the Bauhaus (Germany). The International Typographic Style has had profound influence on graphic design as a part of the modernist movement, impacting many design-related fields including architecture and art. It emphasizes simplicity, clarity, readability, and objectivity. Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz-Grotesk and Helvetica, and flush left, ragged right text. Read more ↗
