April 23, 2025

Gebrauchsgraphik

August 1952

Founded in 1924 by Dr. H.K. Frenzel, an architect and designer, the Berlin-based magazine, Gebrauchsgraphik, focused on modern poster and advertising art, illustration, and typography.

Among the first generation of European design publications, it beceame influential in the design world of the Weimar Republic. Many members of the avant-garde, including those associated with the Bauhaus, were involved.

Not surprisingly, the Nazis opposed it & finally, in 1944, it closed.

In 1950, Gebrauchsgraphik was relaunched in Munich at a time when the graphic design world was expanding and becoming more international. The U.S. was at the peak of its production and consumption, and Europe was rapidly rebuilding its economies. Creative graphic design was again in huge demand.

As Steven Heller put it in an article published in Print magazine, June 28, 2021, “Futura was still used for the body type, until Helvetica replaced it years later. The covers were still as creatively variegated from issue to issue as they ever were. But graphic styles had changed. The streamlined Deco cubism of the ’20s and ’30s was replaced by the expressive brush and pen strokes of the Postwar period. Abstract and sketchy was in, and heavily rendered rendering was out…”

August 1957

February 1935

January 1926