Theo Ballmer has influenced modern graphic design greatly, though little is known about

him and his contemporaries. Ballmer is known for being part of the movement that created Swiss

design, also known as The International Style. His style is the direct influence of Soviet

constructivist and modernist ideals. It is characterized by the implementation of photography, a

grid structure and strong bold hand lettering. Ballmer was born in Basel, Switzerland on

september 29, 1902 and died on december 10th, 1965. he was named Auguste Théophile, but is

known as Theo Ballmer. He studied at Bauhaus in Dessau, but had already worked as a graphic

designer before studying at bauhaus. After bauhaus he taught design and photography in basel.

Eye magazine did a feature on Theo Ballmer in 1997, the feature was published in their

64th issue. The Feature was titled “swiss radical”, and it was for the most part a brief

biographical article on Ballmer’s life and controversial posters. The issue is no longer in print but

can be obtained through a membership from the European magazine, the magazine isn't common

on American shelves which makes it hard to find information on Theo (I recently tried to obtain

the article, but the online search takes you to an abstract of the article, I emailed Eye Magazine

and the emailed me the whole article which they recently posted). The title of the article singles

out Ballmer as more of a radical than a father of design, international style design. Richard

Hollis, the author of the article as well as the author of Swiss graphic design: the origins and

growth of an international style points out that Theo was designing during the height of the Nazi

Control in Europe. In both the article and book hollis Says that Ballmer was very political in his

designs, always depicting and romanticizing the Soviet union, through the use of color and

symbols like the sickle and hammer in the poster below. Ballmer had to balance his

“commercial and political” work so creating a style that worked good for both made it easier for
him, hollis says that due to the technology at hand like lithography, photography and soviet

influence Ballmer could now create a new aesthetic. An aesthetic that was bold and powerful;

using the overlap of words and images.

The style Ballmer practiced was a result of soviet constructivist propaganda.

constructivism was a modernist ideal

that came from Russia. Steven

heller’s book Graphic Design

history quotes constructivism as “an

applied design: it said, in effect, “go

to the factories, this is the only task

for artists”; constructivism “called

upon artists ‘to construct’ art and

change the world instead of merely

depicting it” (Heller p.214).

According to The Graphic Design

Archive online or GDA,

constructivism was a style

“characterized by formal structure

and objectivity. Simplicity and

geometry were basic qualities. The

color red became the symbol of this bold style that in many ways was revolutionary”. The

characteristics of constructivism influenced Theo Ballmer as well as his contemporaries and thus
molding their style into the New Swiss Style, the international style. Hollis notes that during

1930 there was a “Russian exhibit” which “exposed the swiss to the soviet avant-garde” (hollis p.

60) and Lewis Blackwell notes in his book 20th century type that the international style came

from “the teachings of Ernst Keller (1891-1968) and Alfred Williman at the school of applied art

in zurich” and their work expressed a “modular order expressed in...constructivism” (Blackwell

68). The influence of constructivism was not limited to the Swiss, in Poland and other Europeans

countries the style was slowly evolving, Blackwell points out that Henryk Berlewi’s (Polish

designer) “approach to functional communication was to create a “mechanical art”, a systemized

idea of creativity that reduced typographic work to a range of functional elements that could be

combined together as building elements” (Blackwell p.56). constructivism the idea that

designers, artists should focus on the structural, mechanical, architectural structures around them

and derive work that was realistic, simple and could communicate directly without excess stuff.

This idea of constructivism was not a wholly new idea, it had its influence in The new

architecture, the modernist styles of

people like Walter Gropius, the

founder of the Bauhaus school.

According to David

Consuegras’ book American type

design & designers Keller ‘begun

teaching at kunstgewerbeschule in

1915, and among his students were

Theo Ballmer, Max Bill, Adrian Frutiger and Eduard Hoffmann. Frutiger and Hoffman would

eventually create seminal type, where Helvetica and Univers came from’(Consuegras p25).

The teachings of Keller also known as ‘father of Swiss graphic design’ would lead to the creation

of Swiss design is characterized by “the presence of the grid, the use of san serif types

(especially Akzidenz Grotesk, 1898), flush left typesetting, and photography rather than

illustration.” (Consuegras p.25). To Ballmer and Max Bill the Soviet Union was seen as a haven,

and the fascist Nazi establishment as hell. Hollis says that Bill designed and printed an

independent weekly called “Die Nation” in protest, The swiss designers were all catching unto a

radical style, designing in protest but Theo was “the most conspicuous” of all of the swiss

designers.(hollis p.49). In the poster above Theo implements the use of red and a grid structure to

convey his message in favor of a soviet style system, in this poster he uses the type to hold the

poster together which creates a secondary contrast of words that plays together with the contrast

in color by “an appropriately dialectical manner of ‘us’ and ‘them’...at the top right are

exaggerated statements (about the Soviet system)...there are contrasted below left, with the ills of

the social democratic states (Hollis p.50). During the time in which Theo was creating his

propaganda poster the Nazi power was gripping more power over eastern europe luckily this

never affected him directly.

Along with the new style came new typography as well well as new photography; and

Theo is not significant in the history for creating constructivist styled poster but also for his

photography and lettering. Photography had been in use for over a hundred years, and in no way

was it a new medium of communication or art but it did influence Ballmer, according to Hollis

Ballmer designed the poster for 100 years of photography. Photography was seen as a member of
the new mechanical building blocks used to create the new designs, “The camera was included

in their enthusiasms for the machine” and in the book painting, photography, film published by

Bauhaus in 1925 “the camera , extends the range of ‘our own optical instrument, the eye’. and it

‘reproduces the purely optical image and therefore shows the optically true distortions,

deformations, foreshortenings, etc.... thus in the photographic camera we have the most reliable

aid to a beginning of objective vision” (Hollis p.73). ‘Ballmer was a student of photography at

Bauhaus, learning the techniques of The New Photography, a technique that saw photography as

a clear and direct way to communicate and drift away from subjective artwork that might convey

more than the object or message.

To Ballmer photography was not a

simply a tool, “Photography

remained central to his work: first,

as part of his design practice, to

produce images of objects for

advertisements, and to document

what he had designed, posters

especially (including Communist

party election posters on street

hoardings, now daubed over with

swastikas); second, as a medium to

record his homeland” (www.EyeMagazine.com). “The Swiss artists felt that photos are better

ways to portray an idea than illustrations and drawings. It also opened up numerous possibilities

for the designers to incorporate unique photos into their design. This improved the aesthetics of
the design and brought in a unique versatility to it”, the camera was more than an objective tool

its manipulation created a whole new aesthetic and it was “essential information” (hollis p.79). In

Swiss Graphic Design there is an

example of Jan Tschichold’s work (seen

above) Which used photography in a

totally new way. Tschichold used the

image to create stress and attract

attention by using a negative instead of

a film positive and building a grid

structure around the image that uses

asymmetry and san-serif lettering,

typical of swiss design (hollis p.77).

This style that Jan Tschichold’s and

other designers expressed was a

characteristic of Ballmer. Ballmer’s

work consist of Photograms and object

photography used to create the

“machine” aesthetic in the image below

we can see an example of his work. Ballmer was not only a designer that implement the new

photography, he was also a photography professor. Ballmer’s teachings helped students see the

power of the lens by creating multiple images of the same object with different lenses, different
apertures, and different types of lighting (Hollis p.76). Ballmer thus influenced the next

generation of swiss designers and their use of photography within the context of the poster.

The style of Ballmer is hardly cited but in the images below, we can see the structural style that

made his work. Ballmer made his design very grid like, and in many of them the grid can be seen

in the simple structure of the letters which are based on the structure of a square. His posters all

have bold san-serif lettering, something which is to have come from his work as a “graphic

designer for one of Basel’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Hoffmann-La Roche. Here he

employed Modernist ingredients – flat areas of colour and geometrical lettering drawn with ruler

and compasses on a grid – which remained a continuing speciality and part of a personal
 style”“graphic artist in the Hoffmann La

Roche” (www.EyeMagazine.com), he

worked there from 1926-28. Its believed

that much of the swiss style developed

from the prosperous medical industry

that had san-serif type and simple bold

graphics meant to communicate the

usage and sell of medicine. According to

an online publication called Swiss

Master of Design The grid structure not

only broke things up into squares it

helped split levels of information into

hierarchies of information. Ballmer’s

use of the grid was also influenced by

the architectural style of the time, it was

characterized by right angles and geometrically formed letters. Ballmer also used a simple color

palette in his work, usually red (something he took from the Russian constructivists) and

“Absolute Mathematical construction, rather than the asymmetrical horizontals” and as noted on

the California state university in Northridge. Ballmer also designed the typical design jobs like:

“notices and decrees, forms, legal documents, passports, certificates, tickets, visiting cards,

invitations, letterheads, and envelops” of which some was exhibited in Basel’s 1930 New
Advertising Design exhibit (Hollis p.64). Along with being a professor and design student,

Ballmer also established his own studio and continued designing and teaching up till his death.

Most writers credit Keller, The Soviets, and Tschichold as the creators of Swiss design;

however Tova Rabinowitz argues in her book Exploring Typography that Theo Ballmer and max

created swiss design because they “recognized that increasing globalization was creating a need

for a visual language that would be suitable for international communication. the style they

developed- which was based on clear arrangement of elements, photography, abstract designs,

and sans-serif typefaces” (Rabinowitz p.34). Ballmer’s name is referenced in a few design books

and little record of his life exists; Recently when faced with this dilemma I decided to to call

those places that link him to Design history. According to Swiss graphic Design Theo was a

photography professor at “the Basel Allgemeine Gewerbeschule (trades school) from 1931 to his

death in 1965” and according to Gregory Vines a staff member at The Basel School of Design

(which was built around Theo’s death) there is a statue of Theo Ballmer at the foot of the school;

he didn't have access to archives on Ballmer (hollis p.22). Vines however directed me towards

Thierry Ballmer, The grandson of Theo Ballmer. Theo Ballmer had a son named Theo Ballmer

the second, there is no information on him, His son Thierry is a practicing Graphic designer and

professor. I called Thierry and e-mailed him but due to our different times couldn't reach him; he

returned my email saying “ I got your email and message on the phone. I am right now very busy

with my office and teaching. Can I get back to you later in about two weeks with the information

you require? Best regards Thierry”. Thierry seems to be quite busy, and though he might not be

creating anti-fascist propaganda posters like his grandfather he is moving the swiss style ahead;

in 2000 he digitized his grandfather’s typeface which consists of 15 different weights. Typeface
is called “Theo Ballmer” and is distributed by URW++, the full family of fonts goes for $350;

but indeed the history of Ballmer is far more valuable than that; unfortunately little is known of

him or published.