Jan Tschichold

titan of typography

modernist design in the late twenties

book designer

leading advocate of

prominent twentieth century german typographer

jan tschichold

Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig

Tschichold’s father’s profession as a scriptwriter gave Tschichold an early introduction into the world of print

Tschichold studied books that covered calligraphy, ornamental script and writing

The World’s Fair for Books and Graphics in 1914 left a huge impression on young Tschichold Jan quit his teaching studies the next day and began attending the Academy for Graphic Arts in Leipzig

in spite of his young age tschichold was

accepted into the academy

during his time at school he also learned engraving, copperplate, woodcutting, wood engraving, and bookbinding his professor often said that there wasn’t anything he could teach tschichold that he did not already know at the age of 19, tschichold began teaching an evening class in script writing at the school and had his own studio

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at this time,

nothing was organized in the print world

tschichold started to examine these deficiencies regular weighted fonts were hardly used typefaces were mixed without much thought, and good typographic quality was rarely found book artists had little knowledge of typography and chose fonts with little to no regard for the text

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More emphasis was placed on arrangement than on artistry Typefaces were sans serif with no relation at all to handwriting.

His layouts began to have rigorous structure and composition, filled with white space, straight lines and thick rules.

Jan became increasingly irritated with the typography of his time In 1928, Tschichold published “Die Neue Typographie,� which would become the bible of every young typesetter of the time.

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TYPOGRAPHIC DESIGN

His next book,

TYPEFACE THEORY, PRACTICES, AND SKETCHES appeared in 1942.

Tschichold’s style was now beginning to leave the elementary influence behind and return to classic typography and art.

He abandoned the asymmetrical Arrangements of industrial typography and began to center almost all of his work. appeared in 1935 and there were 1000 orders before it was even printed out.

In 1946, Tschichold relocated to London at the invitation of Allen Lane from Penguin Books Over the next three years, Tschichold began to rework the typographic form and design of penguin books.

This was a massive task and encompassed the complete overhaul of the books’ typography and setup.

Tschichold established a set of rules to be used across all books to be published by penguin.

After many years of development, Tschichold released the beautiful and elegant Sabon

Inspired by Claude Garamond font specimen sheet, Sabon would go on to become an instant classic in the world of typographic design.

jan tschichold passed away august 11, 1974 few have left deeper impressions

on the field of typography

tschichold cleared away the old typography of pre-1925 and made room for a modern, structured, and regulated new typography his influence on the print industry and designers in Europe and the USA is uncontested, and his famous typeface Sabon is still a bestseller tschichold continues to influence a number of students and designers alike