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(Text)
light
5
Light is a constant source
of kinetic energy, ever
changing on the infinite
continuum of day into
night. It is also an essential design element in visual communica-
tion because it fundamentally allows us to “see” and visually expe-
rience our world as we know it. In visual communications, light
“Light is the ultimate messenger of the universe.”
Anonymous
light \'l t\ n
1 a: something that makes vision
possible
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1928
bauhaus zeitschrift (Bauhaus magazine)
Berlin, Germany
Herbert Bayer (1900–1985), was a pio-
neering designer, typographer, architect,
painter, photographer, and educator.
After completing his military service,
he was an architect’s apprentice working
on commissions including interiors, fur-
niture, and packaging.
In 1921, Bayer enrolled as a student at
the Bauhaus in Weimar, where he studied
under Wassily Kandinsky and later under
Lazlo Moholy-Nagy. Following the closing
of the Bauhaus, arrangements were made to
transfer the school to Dessau, and in 1925
Bayer and five other former students in-
cluding Marcel Breuer, Joost Schmidt, and
Josef Albers were appointed teachers.
As an educator, he transformed the
Bauhaus by eliminating the use of lithog-
raphy and woodcuts and introducing mov-
able type and mechanical presses to the
Dessau workshops. The use of serif, black
letter, and capital letterform ended; the use
of sans serif, lowercase letterforms began.
Typographic form was now asymmetric,
simple, and direct.
During his years at Dessau, Bayer had
been strongly influenced by Moholy-Nagy’s
enthusiasm for photography as a contem-
porary means of visual communication and
started to experiment with various pho-
tographic techniques including collage,
photomontage, and light.
Bayer’s most original use of light (and
shadow) was with his photomontage for the
1928 cover of the bauhaus zeitschrift. In
this memorable composition, he uses light
in a dramatic and striking manner. Addi-
tionally, Bayer makes use of a cube, ball,
and cone (solidifications of Kandinsky’s
iconic square, circle, and triangle) along
with sharpened pencil and transparent
triangle juxtaposed over the surface of
is either used as a sensation of light, a source
of light or illumination, a representation of it,
or an awareness of it, on design elements in a
graphic composition.
Technically, light is defined as an elec-
tromagnetic radiation of wavelengths that
are visible to the human eye. It also refers to
other wavelengths that are not detectable by
the eye such as ultraviolet (
UV) and infrared.
Historical References
In the fifth century, the Greeks recognized
a direct link between the human eye and
(continued on page 52)
Introduction to Philosophy
São Paulo, Brazil
School of Visual Arts
New York, New York, USA
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