Three questions about Bauhaus magazine 10 for – Tom Ising
Three questions for Tom Ising from the Munich agency Herburg Weiland. Herburg Weiland not only designed the series of the Bauhaus magazine according to the respective topic, but also developed the corporate design of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. Here Tom Ising talks about the challenge of designing a universally understandable magazine with the magazine Bauhaus 10 – Standard through creative and typographical reduction.
"Extremely reduced design offers an ideal projection surface for new ideas"
Tom, the magazine Bauhaus 10 deals with the annual theme of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation: Standard. How did you implement this in your design?
Tom Ising: Standard plays an important role not only in the design of the magazine, but also in the entire corporate design that we created for the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. The corporate design is made up of standardised elements. We only use DIN formats, automatic line spacing and the Arial system font. After all, the historic Bauhaus was not just a school, but stood then and now for a certain attitude: to constantly rethink the world and at the same time offer a platform for visionary ideas. The corporate design reflects this attitude. Its extremely reduced design offers an ideal projection surface on which new ideas can be developed and made internationally understandable. In the spirit of the historic Bauhaus, it thus pursues the goal of being universally understandable and of being able to reach everyone with its message even in the 21st century.
At first sight, the magazine looks very simple because of its reduction and limitation. What were the challenges in the implementation?
Tom Ising: It is precisely this lack of decorative elements such as colours, other fonts and particularly eye-catching designs that makes the magazine so interesting. You can concentrate very well on the content. We show that it is also possible to create a well thought-out magazine order by setting the design limits so tightly.
A very important element of the journal 10 is the uniform typography. The historic Bauhaus was also known for its typographic experiments. What is so special about this magazine?
Tom Ising: We wanted to strengthen the topic of standards typographically by avoiding different font sizes in contrast to the previous issues. There is only one font size in the entire issue: Arial regular in 10.8 pt. From the headline, to the continuous text, the caption, the pagina to the footnote. This limitation to only one size was a great challenge for the design of the magazine and in our opinion it was very successful!
