debauhaus1-6, Exercise 3: The lower-case alphabet

Model answer:

The argument for a lower-case-only alphabet was set out by Herbert Bayer and others around 1925 (check the date). It said that spoken language has no capital letters, so a writing system with one set of letters is simpler, more logical and faster to learn and to set in type, and it fitted the school's wish to strip design down to what is necessary. The school's stationery and publications adopted small letters, and Bayer drew a plain, sans-serif "universal" alphabet to go with it.

Why it was controversial in German: German capitalises all nouns, and the capital letters help readers see the structure of a sentence and find the nouns at a glance. Critics argued that removing them made German harder to read, and some saw the idea as a stylish fashion that put theory above readers (check the debate). It also did not catch on for ordinary writing, although the plain sans-serif look and grid layouts that came with it influenced twentieth-century graphic design, together with the work of other designers of the "New Typography" (check).