Peter Behrens was an artist, architect and designer. He studied at a fine arts school in Hamburg and later moved to Munich where he started becoming very involved in the arts and crafts movement. He was a very busy guy throughout his life, from building his own house to being art director of the arts and crafts school in Dusseldorf.
Image taken from luc.devroye.com
Behrens also had a deep interest for typography and created many different typefaces throughout his life. Behrens-Shrift, Behrens Mediaeval, Behrens-Antique and Bahrens Kursiv, to name a few. He mixed traditional German black letter with Jugendstil illustrative work. He went on to design a whole book in this new sans-serif typeface. This started a bit of an evolution in Germany as it had never been done before. This was the beginning of Germany finally leading away from the old traditional black lettering and onto sans-serif.
Image taken from FontBros.com
One of his reigning achievements was when he was appointed general director of AEG which is one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world. At AEG Behrens went on to create an insane number of things, like their Hexagonal trademark, catalogs and numerous amounts of office stationery. He was one of the earliest graphic designers and with working with this company he really helped them to create their own brand identity.
Image taken from Britannica.com
Peter Behrens is a very important figure when it comes to graphic design. He helped to establish what exactly it means to be a graphic designer as well as catapult an evolution in the world of typography.
Works Cited
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Peter Behrens.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 10 Apr. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Behrens.
“Peter Behrens.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Sept. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Behrens.
Leave a Reply