History & Practice Session VI: The Ulm School of Design

​Max Bill

Max Bill was born on the 22nd of December 1908 in Winterthur, Switzerland. Bill began studying at the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1927 to 1929 after an apprenticeship as a silversmith, this then lead to him moving to Zurich.
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Bill is widely considered one of the greatest influences on Swiss graphic design beginning in the 1950s due to his incredibly progressive work and theoretical writing. Being an industrial designer, his work is distinguished by precise proportions and the clarity of design. Examples of this would be the clocks and watches he designed for long-term client Junghans.

As a designer and artist he wanted to create forms that visually represented the New Physics of the early 20th century, creating objects so that the new science of form could be understood by the senses. This is known as Concrete Art, an art movement with an emphasis on geometrical abstraction.

Max Bill, Endless Ribbon, 1961-62

Max Bill, doppelfläche mit sechs rechtwinkligen ecken, 1948-78

Bill became a professor in 1944 at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich, specializing in Design and Typography. He later went on to found the Ulm School of Design in 1953 alongside Inge Aicher-Scholl and Otl Aicher in Germany with Bill designing the building. This design school was originally created in the tradition of the Bauhaus but later developed a new approach of integrating art and science. Bill was the first rector of the school, although he later resigned is 1956 due to changes in the teaching approach that the design school had taken, favouring the traditional Bauhaus teaching approach. He continued to teach until finally leaving the school in 1957.

​Additionally to teaching, Bill wrote and lectured extensively on art, architecture, and design. He appeared at many design conferences around the world and wrote books about artistic theory. In 1982 he received the Sir Misha Black award and was added to the College of Medallists. He died on the 9th of December 1994.

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Max Bill, verdichtung aus violet, 1970