formwork

A school of making, running evening and weekend courses in three workshops. Kandinsky's preliminary course assigned the triangle to yellow, the square to red and the circle to blue. Formwork gives each workshop one of those pairs and builds every mark from them.

client
Fictional, self-initiated
sector
Craft education
scope
Mark system, prospectus, signage, screen
method
After Joost Schmidt and Herbert Bayer
built
CSS shapes, overprinted
01

the mark

The name in lowercase beside all three primitives overlapping. Bayer removed capitals from the Bauhaus printing on the grounds that we do not speak in capitals, and this follows him.

primary lockup, all three workshops

lowercase
The name is never capitalised, including at the start of a sentence and including in legal text.
overlap
The primitives overprint, so where two cross they make a fourth colour that is never specified anywhere. On paper that is multiply and the overlap darkens; on a lit screen it is screen and the overlap lightens.
order
Triangle, square, circle, left to right. It is the order of the preliminary course and it does not change.
never
Never outline a primitive, never rotate one, and never set the name above or below the stack.
02

the combination

A course belongs to one workshop, two, or all three. Its mark is those primitives and no others. Turn the workshops on and off and the mark rebuilds itself.

fixed
Three primitives, three colours, three positions. A shape always appears in the same place in the field.
chosen
Which workshops a course belongs to. That is the only decision anyone makes.
result
Seven possible marks. Every course in the prospectus is one of the seven and every one is recognisable.
why
A school with forty courses cannot design forty identities. It can teach three shapes to everyone who works there in an afternoon.
03

the workshops

Three rooms, three primitives, three colours. The assignment is Kandinsky's and it is not open to preference, which is exactly why it has survived a hundred years.

printtriangle · #F2B705Letterpress, screen and riso. The sharp one, and the loudest room.
woodsquare · #D62828Bench joinery and turning. The static one, and the one with the dust extractor.
claycircle · #1A4FA0Wheel and hand building. The calm one, and the only room with a kiln.
closed
Three workshops and three colours. A fourth room means a fourth primitive, and there is not an obvious one, which is a useful brake on expansion.
overlaps
Orange, purple and green appear only where two primitives cross. They are never used as flat colours anywhere.
black
All type. It is not one of the three and never fills a primitive.
04

typography

One geometric sans in three weights, set lowercase throughout. No second typeface, no capitals, and no italics, because a geometric sans does not have a real one.

course
500bench joinery
workshop
400wood, tuesdays
copy
300, 16 / 27Ten weeks, six people, one bench each. You will make a stool that holds an adult, and you will take it home whether or not you like it.
data
500, tracked10 weeks · tuesdays 18.30 · £340
05

applications

The mark tells you which room to walk into before you have read a word, which is the only job it has in a building with three doors off one corridor.

prospectus · autumn

forty courses,
three rooms

  • bench joinery340
  • throwing, beginners295
  • letterpress250
  • turning310
  • glaze chemistry180

prospectus spread, a4 landscape

bench 04 Return chisels to the rack. Blades face the wall.

bench label, 120 × 52 mm

coursesworkshopsvisitbook

learn it
with your hands

Evening and weekend courses in print, wood and clay. Six to a class, and the tools are included.

see the autumn list

website

bench
joinery

ten weekstuesdays 18.30

course poster, a2

clay Wheel, hand building, glaze. Kiln fires Thursday. room three

door sign

06

what breaks it

Three of these are attempts to make the mark more expressive. The fourth is what happens when somebody exports it for a screen without checking.

×
do not use opaque shapes Without the overprint there is no fourth colour and no evidence that two workshops are involved. The overlap is the information.
×
do not swap the pairs A blue triangle means nothing. The pairing is the whole index, and once it moves the signage stops working.
×
do not rotate a primitive A tilted square is a diamond and reads as a fourth shape. The positions are fixed so the marks stay comparable.
×
do not put it on black Multiply against a dark ground turns every primitive to mud. On dark the mark is reversed to outline, which is a separate drawing.