precise yet thoroughly novel letterforms that are so harmonious when
composed into the three words and then partially obliterated that they
phenomenally retain their readability. The viewer is indeed asked to take a
second or two to decode the lettering, but once accomplished, the mysterious
beauty and overt significance of the poster is obvious.
I have used many words in the above paragraph to explain what
Hofmann so effortlessly achieved with just a few strategic marks on paper,
which just goes to underscore the very essence of his achievement.
Hofmann is a master of eloquent economy, not the cold
stereotypical reductionism associated with the 1950 s- and 1960 s-era
corporate variation of the Swiss Style (which is used on generic packages,
traffic tickets, and business forms), but rather a graceful complex simplicity
that combines purely aesthetic and distinctly functional values. While his
graphic language, comprised of radical shifts in scale (never superfluous),
precisionist type arrangement (at no time predictable), and stark symbolism
(by no means clinical), is rooted in what is referred to as “Swiss
rationalism,” it is nonetheless imbued with a particular personal dialect
underscored by emotion. I have often heard critics of orthodox Swiss
design who call it unrepentantly cold and formulaic, but Hofmann both
defies and transcends this tunnel view.
Die Gute Formis anchored on a rigid grid, yet the armature is
invisible to the naked eye thanks to the resolute fluidity of Hofmann’s
typography. The same is true with his other purely typographical posters,
wherein custom designed letterforms are constructed with sculptural
character to be both conventionally read and intimately experienced.Temple
and Tea House in Japan( 1955 ),Wood as Building Material( 1955 ), and Karl
Geiser( 1957 ) have more personality and actually tell more story with only a
few smartly stacked, constructed, and interconnected words than most
pictorial narratives. As with Die Gute Form, Hofmann has produced in these
posters abstract entities that are immediately recognizable as both pattern
and word. When each individual poster is viewed in a repeating sequence on
a wall or display case, the viewer experiences the aesthetic virtues—a
dramatic arrangement of form—but when viewed individually, the message is
clearly readable as a conventional missive.
The drama Hofmann could achieve with just a few words is even
more intense when he uses only two letters. Indeed, one of Hofmann’s
recurring leitmotifs is the employ of two bold capitals—a Modernist
monogram—for a series of art exhibition posters at the Kunsthalle Basel.
Each exhibition features two curiously and sometimes harmoniously
matched artists, and so for the poster, Hofmann has two immense initials
sharing the same bill, such as “CL” for Fernand Leger and Alexander Calder
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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