UTOPIA Documents of Reality

For the privately published Utopia, Itten paired reproductions of classical art with commentary in the form of dense and chaotic hand-lettered compositions, the likes of which are rarely seen in graphic design history until the punk and grunge movements of the late twentieth century. While not a Bauhaus publication, he collaborated with his students from the school. Margit TéryAdler designed the cover, and Friedl Dicker is credited for typesetting and directing the printing at large.

Dicker’s pages complement Itten’s lettering, in some ways translating his wild sketches into typographic form. Yet they have a refreshing look all their own. She practically painted with type, setting words on curved baselines, mixing cases and fonts, and using red backgrounds and underlines to highlight and bolster the black text. It must have required immense skill and patience to create these light and dynamic designs with metal type on a letterpress which resists anything beyond the default rectangle.

Excitingly, Utopia also includes two contributions by women who studied at the Bauhaus with Itten. First, there’s the Oxford blue, geometric cover by Margit Téry-Adler, and then there’s an introduction by Itten, typeset by his student Friedl Dicker and featuring incredible improvisational typography. Her contribution is a technical tour de force, with its puzzle of typefaces, curved words, and overprinting. Ultimately, it’s a fascinating typographic adaptation of Itten’s hand-lettering—combining decorative black letters with regular serif typefaces and the occasional bold san serif