By reducing the world of things to their essence, the Bauhaus helped us to conceive and build the modern world. They did this by influencing art, furniture, architecture, and design through minimalist forms and functional designs that took advantage of advances in mass production and modern construction materials: concrete, glass, and steel. Herbert Bayer applied these same principles to design the geometric sans-serif Universal Typeface in 1925. New tools are helping me extend the original design to create a complete family of digital type.
Type gives physical form to abstract ideas. The alphabet is a pretty amazing technology. As a designer, I am inspired by creativity and language and how people can bring ideas into reality. We design and build things to create engaging human experiences, from perception (senses) to cognition (mind) to emotion (heart) to action (body). But ultimately, all this effort is ephemeral.
Still, I find inspiration in a story that transcends human experience. If there is One who already knows the whole story from beginning to end, who brought the world into being by speaking, by giving physical form to ideas, that is a story that fills me with wonder. I find hope in a holistic conception of building that transcends the merely material: building relationships, building a community, becoming one with the One who created us and calls us to love. Because love builds.