Professional Career

Professional Career

In between his time at the Bauhaus and his career in America he spent time as the Art Director of Vogue magazine's Berlin office. His contributions to the fields of graphic design, typography and advertising were many. One that should be noted was his design for a typeface that consisted of entirely lowercase letters. The German blackletter types were overly ornate for his taste and their use of capital letters for every proper noun was annoying. Logically, Bayer developed a sans-serif alphabet of lowercase letters titled "Universal". In 1946 Bayer moved to Aspen, Colorado where he spent much of his time designing local architecture and posters for the local community. In 1959 he designed another sans-serif typeface. Again it was all in lowercase, but he called it "fonetik alfabet" and it contained special characters for the endings -ed, -ion, -ory, and -ing. He is one of the most recognized designers to come from the Bauhaus institution and his theories of design are still taught in many schools today.