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Introduction |
History | Technology |
Theory |
Legibility |
Graphic Design |
Conclusion |
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Dada, with its rejection of art and tradition, stretched the visual
vocabulary of Futurism. By releasing the letterform from traditional phonic symbolism
Dada pushed the Cubist concept of the letterform as a concrete visual shape. Dada
continued to push typography further from it traditional usage “through a
synthesis of spontaneous chance actions with planned decisions”.4
The designer Kurt Schwitters created an offshoot of Dada which he entitled Merz. In his
work, Schwitters, combined a strong sense of design with the elements of chance and
nonsense proposed by the Dadaists. He wrote and designed poetry in which he played
sense against nonsense, defining poetry as the interaction of elements: letters, syllables,
words, and sentences.5 In the early 1920's Schwitters was deeply
influenced by the work of the Russian Constructivists as well as, contributors to de Stijl,
especially designer/painter/writer Theo van Doesburg. He and van Doesburg collaborated
on a book design entitled, Die Scheuche Marchen which had as its characters
typographic forms. Also, between 1923 and 1932 Schwitters produced twenty-four
issues of his periodical Merz which continued to push the bounds of graphic
expression. |
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 Kurt Schwitters, Magazine cover, Merz 8/9, 1924. |
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