a bauhaus workshop: flipbooks created from a collaborative experience for creatives of all levels

International typography is a class where the students choose designers and studios to visit and evaluate how they use typography in creative and their design process. So the prompt for this particular project was to choose a German designer from the Bauhaus or one of the many studios we visited and incorporate that designer’s methods, outcome, process, or influence into a type based design project.

design challenge

I was intrigued by the collaboration and process of creative thinking we encountered as a class during the visits to the Bauhaus locations. My classmate and I decided to host a workshop inspired by the Bauhaus masters to determine what our final projects would be. My workshop co-host Andrea Weissenbughler and myself set up an environment where people of all levels and from all areas of life could participate in the creative design thinking process. We would be their Bauhaus master guides by designing a workshop with various phases focusing on graphic design elements to create a final collaborative design.

design research

Andrea and I traveled to Weimar, Germany, to the first Bauhaus location, and Dessau, Germany, where the Bauhaus school continued, with our typography class. Tour guides shared the history of the masters and the evolution of the school as we walked through the buildings.

We then began developing a detailed guide of color theory, shape, typography, layout, and aesthetic for our workshop attendees. We tried to incorporate inspiration the Bauhaus would use, for example Johannes Itten and his yoga practices.

design process

bauhaus style workshops

We hosted a workshop with attendees from the Texas State MFA program, an investigator for the state, a lawyer, and an artist. This combination of people would benefit our goal of unique creative outcomes. We took one of the Bauhaus wall paintings, reversed the image out to a line drawing, and cut the image up into sections. During the workshop we passed out the tiles from the image and had the attendees use these canvases as their base image. At the beginning of the workshop we later presented Bauhaus history and provided information about each mini session influenced by the masters of the Bauhaus. The mini sessions were shape with Kandinsky, typography with Moholy-Nagy, movement with Klee, and color with Itten. In between each session we had attendees swap tiles with a partner creating an opportunity for collaboration and creative thinking possibilities.

solution

During the workshop I took photos of the phases of tiles during the process of the sessions. I then created flip books to showcase the experience of the attendees during the workshop. These flip books represent the unlimited outcomes of creative thinking and collaboration. There are two tiles per flip book, after flipping through one side the user can flip to the other side and see another tile process. A box houses the flip books and each one can be pulled out to interact with. On the cover of each flip book there is a quote from the attendee about the letter they chose during the typography session.

The outcome of these flip books could be used to showcase the results of people from all backgrounds being a part of the creative process. I think there is value in collaboration.