Max Bill - Swiss Designer

Max bill born in Winterthur, Switzerland 1908, he was an architect, painter, typographer, industrial designer, engineer, sculptor, educator, and graphic designer. In the beginning he was a student at the kunstgewerbeschule and apprenticed as a silversmith before beginning his studies in 1927 at the Bauhaus in Dessau under the guidance of Kandinsky, Klee and Schlemmer. Bill had settle permanently in Zurich in 1929 and in 1937 he became involved with the group of swiss artist and designers named the Allianz. This group advocated the concrete theories of art and design, which Max Huber, Leo Leuppi and Richard Lohse was also members.

In 1950, him and Otl Aicher founded the Ulm school of design (Hochschule fur Gestaltung-HfG Ulm) in Ulm, Germany, a design school that was mainly inspired from the Bauhaus, that was notable for its inclusion and semiotics. Bill was with the vision that “It is possible to develop an art largely on the basis of mathematical thinking.” Over, the 1967-71 period, Bill taught at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Hamburg and he was also the chair of environmental design.

As a graphic designer, he embraced the tenets and philosophical views of this modernist movement. His work majorly was based solely on cohesive principles of oraginization and composed of forms, his designs look rather simple, but if we had to analyze it today we find modular grids, san serif typography, asymmetric compositions, linear spatial divisions, mathematical progressions, and dynamic figure–ground relationships.