mood board

the look, pinned: color, type, form, material and the objects that carry them.

the board

twenty-four pins. the reference images are originals drawn for this system, not photographs of the school's work.

Poster of circle, triangle and square in primary colors with the word bauhaus — **primary forms, primary color**circle, triangle, square. red, yellow, blue. everything else is built from these.

signal red

#D93A2B

chrome yellow

#F4B81B

ultramarine

#1E4FA0

ink black

#161616

paper grey

#EDEAE2

the palettethree saturated primaries plus black and a neutral ground. no gradients, no tints.

form follows function

an idea older than the school, but the one it lived by. shape comes from purpose.

the slogan

kandinsky's questionnaireyellow triangle, red square, blue circle: the pairing he proposed in 1923.

Abstract glass curtain wall building — **glass and grid**curtain-wall facades, flat roofs, windows as a rhythm instead of decoration.

abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz

lowercase onlyherbert bayer's universal alphabet, 1925, dropped capitals. geometric sans, tight tracking, heavy weights.

Tubular steel club chair on yellow — **tubular steel**breuer's club chair: bent pipe and stretched bands, a bicycle handlebar turned into furniture.

less is more

mies van der rohe, the school's last director.

the other slogan

Abstract composition of circles, lines and triangle — **abstract composition**diagonals, overlapping discs and a few precise lines. balance without symmetry.

Aa 96display / 800

Heading 56h1 / 700

Body copy at 18 on 26.body / 400

spacing 8 / 16 / 24 / 32 / 48 / 64. corners 0. borders 3 px. shadows none.

the system in tokensone typeface, a strict scale, an 8-point spacing rhythm, hard edges and flat color.

Hemispherical metal teapot on blue — **pure geometry in metal**a hemisphere, a cylinder, a ring. marianne brandt's teapot is all three.

function decides form
reduce to essentials
geometry first
honest materials
design for production
asymmetric balance
art and craft are one

core principlesseven rules that repeat across architecture, objects and print.

Typographic poster form follows function — **typographic poster**heavy sans, bars as rules, three colors on ink.

woven gridsanni albers and the weaving workshop treated cloth as color and structure.

steel

glass

plywood

concrete

material honestysteel, glass, bent wood and concrete, left unpainted and unornamented.

no back legsthe cantilever chair: one bent tube, springy and light, made possible by steel.

Poster of a geometric dancer figure on a stage — **the triadic figure**costume as geometry: a dancer built from cones, discs and spheres.

photomontagemoholy-nagy and bayer layered photography, dots and geometry into new images.

Poster of a staircase of colored blocks — **die treppe**the dessau stairway as a stack of colored steps.

the wagenfeld lampglass globe, glass stem, metal foot. every part is a basic solid.

Twelve-step color wheel poster — **farbkreis**three, six and twelve steps around the circle.

pattern as systemthree shapes, three colors, one repeat. wallpaper and textile prints used the same logic.

years, three cities, one school that changed how everything is made.

Halftone photomontage collage — **neues sehen**the new vision: dots, discs and diagonals layered.

the earlier boards

the two boards this site grew out of, kept as they were.

the first board

the pinterest-style mood board from the start of the project: twenty-one drawn pins on the principles, palette, type and objects.

open the first board

the series board

the eight illustrations and five system sheets as a second board, before the site existed.

open the series board

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