Bauhaus School, Art Nouveau and Zoo Advertising

Bauhaus School
Walter Gropius was the man who founded the Bauhaus School in 1919 and was director until he stood down in 1928, when Hannes Meyer became director. He was fired in 1930, and replaced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was director until the schools close in 1933.
Gropius was born in 1883 in Berlin. He studied architecture from 1903 until 1907. After this he worked in Peter Behrens' practice until 1910 when he opened his own. Around this time he became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund, a group whose aim was to promote creativity in design. He founded the Bauhaus School in 1919 and was director until 1927. He stayed in Europe and England until moving to America in 1937 to take up a teaching position at Harvard. In 1938 he opened a joint practice with Marcel Breuer. He died in Boston in 1969.
Meyer was born in 1889 in Switzerland. he took over as director of the Bauhaus school in 1928, and it was under his Communist beliefs and influence that many of the students followed, thus bringing unwanted political attention to the school. He was fired as director in 1930 by the Mayor of Dessau. After his sacking, he and several students formed a group whose projects included architectual structures and urban planning projects. He travelled a lot after this group was also forced to quit, but returned to Switzerland where he died in 1954.
Mies was born in 1886 in Germany. Before opening his own practice in 1912 he worked for several years at the practice of Peter Behrens, and studied his craft. He designed many buildings, including skyscrapers. He became the director of the Bauhaus School in 1930 and stayed on until the school was forced to close in 1933 by the new German Nazi Government. In 1937 he moved to Chicago where he became the head of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He also later designed this Institutes new campus, as well as many structures in his style of open space, steel and glass. He died in Chicago in 1969.

Style
Bauhaus was a Utopian driven school in Germany that believe in changing the world through design. Bauhaus means "build House". Bauhaus movement started in 1919-1933, it's main aim was to bring arts and crafts together to make a better place for people to live in. Walter Gropius the founder of the Bauhaus school was known to say " Form follows function and together let us

desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity” Walter Gropius http://thinkexist.com
The main influences to this movement was in architecture, future, and in typography. The style is referred to being spare, functional, and geometric. Which appealed to the Western Europe.
The Impact of Bauhaus
In the decades following its end, the Bauhaus had a major impact on the trends of art and architecture in Western Europe, The USA, Canada and Israel. The style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design and typography.

One of the main objectives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft and technology, and the exploration of fundamentals such as the material properties of wood and metal or how colours and forms operated within an image instead of recreating or imitating great artworks fo the past. Today’s “Basic Design” course comes from Bauhaus’ Vorkurs (“initial” or “preliminary course”), which is offered in architectural and design schools all over the world.
One of the most important contributions of the Bauhaus is modern furniture design. Many chair designs we see today are created in the Bauhaus style - sleek and geometric. Buildings and other architectural structures we see are also influenced by the Bauhaus style. The city of Chicago is probably one of the best examples of this.

Zoo Advertising
Zoo Advertising has been around for over 10 years, working out of their Canberra based studios.
The team of designers have quite a number of years experience working in the Graphics Industry.
Although there isn't a lot of information about the formation of the studio their web site is beautifully produced, with a finish that keeps you going back and looking for more within it.
Their portfolio of work is very impressive and the quality of the work is very clean and attractive. They offer skills of design, branding, web design and corporate image. Their logos and poster work are exceptional and very creative. There work also includes interior design work as well as work that is seen outdoors (such as banners and posters), one of the designers has also created his own clothing brand (Spader) where he incorporates many of his designs.
Much of the work the agency does stems from local and federal government agencies although it is not limited to this area.
The design team has a vision of where they want to be in the now and in the future and they do this by keeping abreast with current trends and having a dynamic team of creative minds who want the best for their clients.
My opinion
Zoo Advertising has a very classy, clean style, their work is beautiful in its simplicity when required but can also be out their and innovative. I love their logo work because of its use of simple typography rather than clutter with images and they seem to be really in tune with the clients needs.