Bayer's Universal: Simplified Communication

Herbert Bayer is considered as one of the most influential graphic designers at Bauhaus school. He established typography as a fundamental factor of rational communication design.

The approach refused extra ornamentation. That the argument promoted a functional clarity that was in harmony with the Institute’s mission of synchronizing technology, art, and utility. Bayer did not see the written word as mere content, but rather a visual structure. He wanted a modern, streamlined, universal aesthetic.

The script materialised in the form of the ‘Universal’ font, developed in the year 1925. A significant departure from conventional orthography, the Universal font is a single-case (lowercase) sans-serif script. A circular and a set stationary column of perpendicular and inclined line in a series of six Altar. Bayer aimed to greatly simplify the communication of written language. He proposed a single alphabet system that would greatly simplify how to read and write.