Jan Tschichold

Jan Tschichold made his mark as a typographer in the twentieth century. He was born in 1902 in Germany but lived the end of his life in Switzerland. His father taught him calligraphy, which served as his training to be a typographer. He also studied at the Akademie für Graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig. He found further training under Walter Tiemann and Hermann Delitsch. He was a teacher in Munich until Nazis arrested him for suspicion of working with the Soviets. He and his family managed to escape to Switzerland where he lived out the remainder of his life. Tschichold was greatly influenced by Bauhaus and changed drastically to a Modernistic style. He is well known for his design of the font Sabon, but he also created Transit, Saskia, and Zeus. He designed a “universal alphabet” to help unify the German language. The “universal alphabet” was written in sans-serif with no capital letters. His book The New Typography is now a classic book on typography and remains a great source for designers today. In the book, Tschichold fondness of sans-serif fonts showed through as well as his liking for a non-centered design. In the book he explained how different sizes and weights of type can illustrate different meanings. For a brief period, Tschichold lived in England where he helped publish Penguin Books. He applied many typographic practices while there and during his two year stay he saw 500 paperback books redesigned. Tschichold had grids and rules on page proportion, in which he believed text should go in certain areas. Tschichold’s ideas greatly influenced future designers and typographers who went on to make the modern typographic grid. These days’ grids have recently started being incorporated into the Internet. Although Jan Tschichold died in 1974 his ideas and work are still making an impact on the world today.