In 2019, the year I graduated, Bauhaus celebrated its 100th anniversary. Given its significant influence in architecture, design, and typography, I decided to center my graduation project on the latter discipline, focusing on its principles as both an influence and a starting point for my thesis.

Regarding typography at Bauhaus, Herbert Bayer designed a font named Universalschrift and pleaded against historical shapes and individual characters. Universalschrift had no lower and upper case but a single style with mixed proportions. Joseph Albers used a stencil to create a font with the primary shapes–square, circle, and triangle. Their constructivist approach, simplified shapes, and repetitions are the core of the Bauhaus philosophy.

Type design aligns with these norms–by drawing the first glyphs (no/ho) to establish size, color, and proportions. The rest of the letters derive from these basic glyphs, following the square-circle-triangle classification. Finally, the components speed up the process and assure consistency in design.

My intention with the Latina Sans Font was to design a constructivist full-latin typeface with improved legibility for body text. One of the questions I pondered was how students of Bauhaus would approach design today, taking advantage of contemporary technology.

I read specialized paperwork and explored reducing the Latin diacritics and accents for a more unified latin alphabet. However, the matter being too complex for the allocated time, it was only included as a manifest in the documentation.

Obtaining good legibility with high reduction is challenging. Pressured by a tight deadline, the showcase for the exhibit shifted toward the design process. This is how the type specimen was replaced by the Process Posters. Finally, at Muffatwerk, were showcased 4 of the 6 Process Posters, printed on A1 transparent paper, and the documentation booklet.