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The Design Theory

Even though Stankowski avoided teaching, with the exception of a guest professorship at the HfG Ulm, he still had more students than some university professors. At a young age — not yet 25 — he conceived his Gestaltungsfibel, or design primer, which served as the basis for his life’s work. The primer made it clear that he was always concerned with clear information in the design, with the visualization of content that could not be depicted through conventional means. Here, Stankowski is one of the great pioneers of the early twentieth century, who began to regard design through primarily functional, not just artistic, criteria. What nowadays seems a matter of course to us was, at that time, hardly conceivable. Each product designed was supposed to be unique, not part of a family of products. It was the systematic designers like Stankowski who first began in the mid-1920s, to deal with the problem of serial and programmatic design. While still a student, he created his first unified advertising tools. Stankowski did not consider himself a pioneer, but as practical. For him, design was a process, and at the beginning of every design process was not invention, but a critical exploration of the real givens. The quality of the work was seen in his ability to find a common trait shared by all of the different elements. This holistic type of thinking made him one of the fathers of corporate design.

The Design Theory
Curator: Peter von Kornatzki

Anton Stankowski
Anti-war, 1927
28.8 x 22 cm
Photo collage/Print

Anton Stankowski
Perspective, 1928
29.4 x 20.7 cm
Ink on paper

Anton Stankowski
Experience, See,
and Write
1939, 29.7 x 20.8 cm,
Tempera/ink on paper

Anton Stankowski
Quantity - Quality, 1931
25.8 x 18.3 cm
Ink on paper