Josef Müller-Brockmann Interview with Roger Remington
Strassenbau-Vorlage JA, poster, 1959
Roger Remington: On the occasion of the major poster exhibit featuring the work of Josef Müller-Brockmann at The Bevier Gallery at RIT, we're very pleased to have Mr. Müller-Brockmann with us today to speak to the students present and to record this interview. Mr. Müller-Brockmann was born in Switzerland and has had a long and distinguished career as a graphic designer, teacher, practitioner of graphic design, and prominent author. His contributions to the literature of our field have been significant.
Mr. Müller-Brockmann, welcome to RIT. I'd like to start this interview by asking you to share some information about your background. Where did you go to school? How did you start in graphic design? Where did it all begin?
Josef Müller-Brockmann: First, I thank you very much for the invitation and for making it possible for my posters to be exhibited here. Thank you very much. About my education, as you probably know, I was an apprentice in a studio for two years, but I didn't learn anything because my boss was never in the studio. So I left after two years without having learned anything really. I didn't know about typography, graphic drawings, or illustration.
Then, for one year, I was a student at the School for Applied Art in Zurich, and my two wonderful teachers were Ernst Keller and Alfred Willimann. I never forget what I could learn in one year from these two masters. I was only in the school for one day a week, half a day in Keller's class and the afternoon in Willimann's class.
Ernst Keller was a teacher for his whole life at the school for applied art for graphic design. What I never forget is that he made marvellous city marks and marvellous posters, really masterpieces. He had his room inside the classroom, and we saw through a window what he did the whole day. He sat at the table and corrected the city mark, even though it was already in use for years. He corrected it for half a year to try to make it better. I never forget it. This is a wonderful example for young students of how to function professionally and maintain professional morals. Never be satisfied with what you have done. Even if you have success, if you are accepted as a good designer, it doesn't matter. Stay self-critical your whole life.
Alfred Willimann was well-known as a graphic designer. He was a master in typography and photography, and first of all, he was a wonderful human being. He never criticised a student's work but always helped, even at night, on Saturdays and Sundays. For me, he even did a poster himself, and I could put my name on it. He did it overnight. He was one of the best Swiss graphic designers we had in the past.
This was my educational background. Then I started as a designer at 18 years old, working as a freelancer. I didn't know I was really a very bad designer, but I knew what I had to learn from masters. So I studied the pioneers of the 20th century like El Lissitzky, Jan Tschichold, Alexander Rodchenko and others. I copied their work and tried to find out what made it qualified. It took many years until I understood what quality is in typography, form-giving, layout, and composition.
I started as an illustrator and was well-known, but I always criticised myself. I had success with my illustrations, but I studied the drawings of Matisse, Picasso, and Leger and others. When I finally understood the significant difference between their drawings and mine, I stopped immediately and never made another drawing. I then started anew to study typography and photography, growing slowly, and I am still learning today. This is my life story.
RR: Could you tell us a little bit more about Tschichold and Lissitzky? Did you meet them or know them?
JMB: No, they were already older than me, and Lissitzky had already died. But I saw that Tschichold had a wonderful philosophy of life. He was a wonderfully informed man about architecture, product design, typography, new ideas in book layouts, drawings, and illustrations. He had contact with writers, architects, city planners, and so on. He was an all-around interested man.
I learned from him to be interested in all aspects: architecture, city planning, writing, sculpture, painting, product design, gardening, typography, and so on. I began at 17 years old to collect books about literature, the arts, architecture, and so on.
Tschichold wrote his first book about the new typography in 1927. It was a typography so clear, full of transparency. Each letter had a significant function and value itself as a masterfully formed letter with individuality. Like the A, like the B, like the C - all the letters are quite different. You see, the A looks to the left, the B looks also to the left and right, the C looks to the right, has like a mouth that's open, has a round inside form, and so on. All the positive forms and negative inside forms are full of tension.
Tschichold recognised and realised this. He used typography in the best traditional way: enough distance between the letters, enough leading space between the lines. Don't use too long lines because from a psychological point of view, if you have long lines, you lose energy to read them. Don't use too short lines because if you always have to change your eyes and begin again, you lose energy too. This is a question of communication.
If the typography is done from a highly functional point of view, you can remember the content of a text much better. This is a psychological point of view, and secondly, also an aesthetic point of view because well-done typography is aesthetic too. But first, it must be functional.
RR: You've called this "objective form." Could you say a little bit more about what you feel is your own personal definition of objectivity in relation to graphic design? Is it similar to what you described about Tschichold?
JMB: Yes. If you want to be an informative and communicative designer, you have to use typography as a medium for communication. If you use typography as an experiment and combine and push together the letters and words, and use too little leading space, it has a certain effect. It looks new because it's different from the traditional, but it's time-bound and not functional. It's not objectively done because typography has the function to inform about something first - to inform clearly, rapidly, and without misunderstanding. This is the function of typography.
You have to know about good alphabets in contrast to bad alphabets. We have more than a thousand bad alphabets, but we have only very few really timeless, well-formed alphabets like Garamond, Baskerville, Grotesque done by Berthold, Univers, Helvetica, Times as an antiqua, and Clarendon is a very good type of letter too. But most alphabets are badly done, not clearly formed, not strongly formed, have no power in the positive forms and negative forms.
It's the same with photography. You can use photography as a medium for communication in an objective way, which means you can photograph an object so that you see first in the photograph the object itself with its form, material, and colour. If you use effects which have nothing to do with the object itself, you are not objective.
In publicity and graphic design, we have more samples which try to be sensational and spectacular rather than objectively informative. For myself, I want to be more objective in the use of typography, photography, stylised forms, and composition. I want to be useful for society also in terms of the object.
I made publicity and exhibitions and advertisements for a tobacco firm, Turmac. When I read for the first time in the newspaper about the danger of cancer from smoking, I immediately told my client it's the last time I'm working for you. I stopped working for them because it makes no sense for me as a citizen to make propaganda for a dangerous product.
I stopped working for badly formed products. I stopped making propaganda for political parties because I distrusted parties. I made propaganda and election campaigns for a party, and I got to know people who were very ambitious and egoistic first, and secondly socially minded. They fought first for their own egoistic profit and secondly for the profit of society. So I said to myself, I think all parties must have more or less the same behaviour: first working for their own profit and secondly to serve society.
RR: So your vision of the graphic designer in society is that he or she really has significant ethical qualities that have to be maintained, such as not doing something which would be harmful to the environment?
JMB: Yes, I thought they have to serve society in a democratic way, and I want to be a useful member of our democratic society. So I had about 12 articles I stopped working for, like I didn't work for nightclubs, not for alcohol, not for tobacco, not for badly formed products, not for un-educational toys for children. We had about 12 articles. It means, of course, a reduction of your income, but this is my freedom. I can admire the freedom we all have - the freedom to think what we want to think, the freedom to work for what we think we should work for.
You are now teaching for many years, for 20 years. This is the most important profession because to influence young people to get a moral and professional approach in their profession and to try to do the best as a professional. I have the highest respect for teachers, and I think the teacher of primary school is the most important position in teaching and education.
I always spoke in Switzerland for better salaries for teachers in kindergarten and primary school because they have in their hands the power to structure the thinking of children. Most families don't have the talent or the moral capacity to influence children to be the best social and human beings.
RR: It's wonderful to hear that. Your work and others from Switzerland has had a profound influence on graphic design in the last 25 years. Much of this has been emulated by others around the world. This comes to mind especially when we see such a wonderful exhibit of work such as yours. How do you feel about the influence of contemporary Swiss ideas in graphic design as they have influenced other countries and other kinds of design?
JMB: You remember I had the idea, based on my philosophy of design, to be objective in my work. I had the idea to found a magazine, and I asked three colleagues - Richard Lohse, Hans Neuberg, and Carlo Vivarelli - to collaborate. We finally published the magazine in three languages with the title "New Graphic Design" to distribute our ideas of objectivity in the use of typography, graphics, drawings, photography, exhibitions - in all thinking.
After 19 issues, unfortunately, the magazine disappeared because it cost too much for the publisher. But I think the influence was more or less worldwide. I saw and wanted to write a book about the influence of Swiss graphic design from the 50s, not 60s, after the last World War.
We had the idea or the thinking that the future must be better than the past, and we have to contribute to help create better thinking in the near future. I was penetrated with this idea. I was fascinated, and I really forgot my illustration also because I thought illustration or drawing is not reality - it's an idea, it's more an artwork than an objective information medium to inform about something.
So it changed also from this point of view to photography because photography is a medium that can inform you precisely and exactly about the existence of a form, a product, or a situation. The magazine "New Graphic Design" showed and published samples of this kind of work worldwide. We published works from your country, from South America, from Italy, from Europe, from Japan, and so on.
I planned to make a book about this influence, and I collected samples from Argentina, from Brazil, from Mexico, from the United Nations, from Europe, from Japan, but I couldn't find time to realise it.
RR: It sounds like a wonderful project. I would hope that you would come back to that and do it.
JMB: I think more important is that this kind of thinking exists in graphic design.
RR: It's out there. How does it feel to you to come here to Rochester and to see so many of your posters in our gallery? You walk around and what does it feel like?
JMB: First, I thank you very much for your hospitality. I was very satisfied seeing my posters. I saw first my mistakes and then some good things. I can tell you about my mistakes when we go and pass my posters.
RR: How do you feel about the criticisms of Swiss graphic design and this objectivity you're talking about? There are obviously critics, some are designers and some are other writers and other types, but it seems like there's always people who are taking pot shots, as we would say, at this, calling it things like "Swiss sanitation" - very clean, being devoid of feeling and emotion, being maybe too uniform. How do you react to these criticisms?
JMB: I accept it because it's right. To be objective in your work, like I am, means also a reduction, an elimination of too much fantasy, of too much creative ideas. This is right, and if I go through my work, I think many times it's too dry, it's too poor because it's only informative, not more. But this is the freedom if you want to accept the negative side too. All things have a positive side and negative side, and you have to decide if you want to stand here or if you have to create your own and make your own viewpoint and create and have a philosophy.
I think it's more important to have a philosophy in your profession and for your life and to want first to be a useful member of a democratic society and not first successful. You can be successful with sensational ideas, with artistic ideas. This is one possibility. I am not against it, but I have no more interest. It's more or less easier to do what gives you success and public success. This can't be against, but in long terms, it doesn't change anything.
We have too many artists as graphic designers, and we have too few graphic designers with philosophy. We have too many graphic designers who want to be artists, and this is a conflict. If you want to be an artist, be a painter or sculptor. If you want to be a graphic designer, you should be a technician in communication - communicate about ideas, about institutions, about products. Be informative for the profit of the customer so that they can use their freedom to buy this product or not to buy. They can do it best on the basis of clear, objective information.
If you change the product and enhance the value of a product by using certain effects, it's a possibility, but it's not the truth. I mean, if you want to be trustworthy and honest in front of society, you have to be objectively informative. So I am penetrated with this idea, and I can't and I don't want to think differently.
RR: You've also been a teacher, and I'm wondering how you see yourself in that role. Do you see yourself transmitting these same kinds of values to your students in the classroom?
JMB: Yes, I think it was a wonderful time for me, and I learned a lot. As a teacher, you have to know what you want to say, so it must be clear to yourself before you communicate it. I studied every evening, thinking I didn't know anything, and those evenings were educational for me. I'm very thankful to my students who helped me think. I spoke to them about informative design and emphasised becoming useful members of a future-oriented democratic society. Decide if you want to be an artist or if you want to follow professional ethics or not." We had a wonderful understanding; it's no problem.
I told them, "As a graphic designer, you have to have eyes that are able to look 360 degrees around yourself. Be interested in architecture, music, modern music, what's happening today in all fields: product design, theater, literature, painting, sculpture, exhibition design, and so on."
I invited architects and writers to my class to speak about their problems. I wanted to invite economic people, but the director of the school stopped me. I had a program where I wanted to invite religious people, economic people, directors of big firms in Switzerland like Nestlé and Braun, as well as singers. I was the first to invite the composer John Cage. He spoke to my students, but the director said he had to play in front of the whole school. I also invited a famous Indian player. It was a first, and I had a whole program. Like you invited me, and like you invited Massimo Vignelli and other designers to bring them in touch with your students too.
RR: Music seems to have been important in your graphic design work. Could you tell us more about your interest in music and how it influenced your designs?
JMB: My first wife, who passed away, had a master's diploma in violin and was part of an orchestra. By chance, I got the opportunity to create posters for them. I tried to convey musical elements like motifs, transparency, lightness, and poetry through geometric forms rather than naturalistic ones. For example, in my poster for Beethoven concerts, I used black forms moving in circles to represent his life's struggles and aspirations.
RR: One of the fascinating aspects of the exhibit is the posters with grids that allow viewers to analyse the composition. Could you speak about the importance of grids in your work?
JMB: In my compositions, every part must be essential; nothing should be unused or unimportant. The grid helps achieve this strict structure. It took me a long time to develop each poster—sometimes up to a month—and even though the pay was minimal, the work was rewarding. The grid ensures that all elements fit together harmoniously with typography.
RR: What has been the largest project you've worked on in your design office?
JMB: The manual for Zurich Airport and the informative guide for the Swiss railway company were significant projects. We started about five years ago, aiming for uniformity across all stations with consistent design guides for letters, forms, and sizes.
RR: What's been your favourite project in your career so far?
JMB: My philosophy is that I think about what I would like to do, but I'm not able to do it - it's too high. All my life I've admired El Lissitzky. He was such a marvellous and genius designer in all fields, and also in his theory. But I still have to learn from this kind of human being.
RR: So Lissitzky is one of your heroes. Who are some others? Who are some other heroes that you've had in your life?
JMB: We have Rodchenko, Tschichold or Max Burchartz was a very good man. And Aicher in Germany, very very good. And today, there's a Japanese designer I admire too - Shigeo Fukuda. He's a wonderful designer. He studied architecture and changed to design. He's more of a graphic designer. He's more or less ingenious. And Shizuko knows him very well.
What I admire is what I would like to do in the near future, but I'm already sure that I am not able to do it. I always have a better view of possibilities, but if I begin to realise them, I immediately introduce errors and mistakes. I tell this only because the young designers are listening and they want to express themselves. But to be a good designer is a very, very hard thing.
I present myself now as a self-critical man. I hope so. But they should feel that I'm very self-critical. I want them to feel and hear and realise the function of self-criticism. It gives you the reason to always admire the heroes - not the heroes as heroes, but the good work and the philosophy behind the works. This is most important, and how they realise their philosophy in design. This is a timeless, wonderful job, and young designers should always have this in their minds, with great examples of pioneers.
RR: You mention the self-criticism idea. I think this is a wonderful suggestion for young people. Do you have any other advice for students? Any other suggestions for young people while they're in school, from your career?
JMB: Yes, to mistrust in the future. When we are well-known and successful, mess with success and stay self-critical. Without the help of critics outside, be your own critic and be the most severe, serious, and strict critic. In my life, I never found a critic who was stronger than myself.
When I was teaching, I presented new posters hung on the wall. I said to my students, "Sit around. I know very well what is well done, but I don't know the mistakes. Let's find out the mistakes." And we studied together for hours and hours and found out the mistakes, the finest mistakes. We made it clear, and it was a wonderful time. I never forget this wonderful time. I learned most that the students learned that you, as their teacher, can be and are not free of mistakes. You have the same troubles as young people to do a useful job without mistakes. And I never did the work without mistakes. This is a message to young students
RR: That's wonderful advice. Could you tell us a little bit, thinking back, about the Ulm School of Design? You were a teacher there. Could you tell us about the school and about your experience there, and why you think that was an important place?
JMB: I think it was the best school in the world at that time because it had the best practical and theoretical program. They had some very good teachers like Maldonado, Max Bill, Gugelot, Aicher, and some guest professors. Fukuda was there for some time, and the students still remember his wonderful teaching.
The students were very motivated and hardworking. It was a very good time. What they realized, and they had the same philosophy as we tried to make well-known with our magazine "New Graphic Design," was that the school tried first to find out useful and ergonomic forms in their products and in graphic design. They tried to be informative and objective. The professors and students eliminated all the sensational, non-objective ideas. Sensations, optical sensations, illustrative sensations were not accepted.
The goal was to be informative, to function in our society as a clear, trustful member who has the profession of communications. Be only very strong, strict, communicative for the best of a better society. This was the whole mentality, the philosophy of the school, with a wonderful theoretical program. We had very famous professors like Max Bense for politics, and they had good professionals in the social field of history.
RR: The school ended, as I understand it, the Ulm School ended in a similar way to the Bauhaus - the political pressure?
JMB: Every good school is first a political problem because a good school tries to change the current situation to a better situation, to better possibilities. Like I said, I try to work for a better future. So this means I want to change the status of today. And so, the school was first a very high political problem.
A Swiss city asked me and had the interest to take over the school when it was closed in 1968. They asked me for my opinion. I said no, Switzerland is not the right country. We are all narrow-minded in Switzerland. We are very talented in banking and thinking clearly in banking, but we are not open-minded enough to accept such a school. This school has faced the trend to change what's existing for a better reality. So it's first political because I can't do good work if it doesn't change the industry and the philosophy of industry.
Like Braun, the Braun company in Frankfurt, they changed the thinking, the philosophy in product design fundamentally. He changed the thinking, and he had first all the firms against them because they don't like to sell such new products. They were uncommon and strange, and they found it too dry, lacking fantasy, and so on. But finally, he got high success. But Erwin Braun, after 15 or 20 years, he said, "Now I did what I could do," and he sold the factory. He had wonderful success, but he said, "I think I have to do a more important thing in my life. I want to study medicine and help sick people." I know him very well, and still today, he's working for new thinking in medicine.
RR: We're coming to the close of our time for the interview. Maybe in a minute or two, could you tell us how you feel about the state of graphic design in the world today? What do you see?
JMB: To be frank, I think it's very primitive because most well-known graphic designers try first to be well-known with new formal sensations - sensations in the idea, in the forms, in the colours, in the whole composition. They want to be uncommon, or they try to find out new tricks. In my opinion, this makes no sense in the long term.
What we need are real democratic-thinking people in all professions to make a new world possible. We should try, in our place, to do our best to change the materialistic thinking. I mean this egoistic thinking - it's terrible in the world. They are producing too many atom bombs, too many weapons, and destructive materials. This is unbelievable today.
We should be thinking as human beings. I learned to know you, I respect you. We met for the first time, but we feel already familiar. This is what's so easy - to find human beings all over the world. I traveled to Russia, I was in Japan, I was in Mexico. First, I met human beings, not politics with egoistic and narrow-minded and stupid and all the traditional, already outdated thinking. We need progressive thinking, human being thinking.
RR: Josef Müller-Brockmann, thank you very much for spending this time. We really appreciate your honesty and all the wonderful information you've given us today.
JMB: I thank you too very much.
Recorded October 6, 1987, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York.
Transcribed: David Costello, Neugraphic, November, 2024