Jan Tschichold

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jan Tschichold (2 April 1902 Leipzig, Germany 11 August 1974

Locarno, Switzerland) (born as Johannes Tzschichhold, also Iwan
Tschichold, Ivan Tschichold) was a calligrapher, typographer and a
book designer. He designed posters, was a teacher and wrote books on
typography.

He was one of the leaders of the movement Elementare Typografie or

"Elementary Typography". Sometimes also referred to as "New
Typography" of "Functional Typography". His most famous type font
was Sabon. Jan Tschichold in 1963

Contents
1 Life
2 Design
3 Typefaces
4 Bibliography
5 See also
6 Sources
7 References
8 External links

Life
Tschichold was the son of a provincial signwriter, and he was trained in calligraphy.

In 1919, he began in the class of Hermann Delitzsch a study on the "Leipzig Academy of the arts". Due to his
extraordinary achievements, he soon became a master pupil of the rector of Walter Tiemann a font designer
for the Gebr.-Klingspor foundry and was commissioned to his fellow students. At the same time, he received
the first orders in the framework of the "Leipziger Messe" and made in 1923 as a typographic consultant to a
printing company independently.

This artisan background and calligraphic training set him apart from almost all other noted typographers of the
time, since they had inevitably trained in architecture or the fine arts. It also may help explain why he never
worked with handmade papers and custom fonts as many typographers did, preferring instead to use stock fonts
on a careful choice from commercial paper stocks.

Up to this moment, only busy with historical and traditional typography, he changed his attitude after his first
visit to the Bauhaus into a completely new direction: Tzschichhold met important artists such as Lszl
Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters and others know whose effort it was, in the context of the "New
Typography" to the Bauhaus, to break the schemes of conventional typography, to find new ways of expression
and to reach a much more experimental way of working. But at the same time, they wanted to standardize,
simplify and a practical approach. Tzschichhold followed enthusiastically to the new set of principles, called
himself "Ivan" because of the sympathy he felt for the predominantly eastern movement. Later he simplified his
name to Tschichold. He became one of the most important representative of the "new typography" due to his
enthusiasm and expertise. In contrast to others, he fell not completely out of the historic and technically
reasonable frame, but made the avant-garde ideas ready for general use. In a famous special issue of
'typographic communications' by 1925 with the title of "Elemental typography", he put together the new
approaches in the form of the thesis.
After the election of Hitler in Germany, all designers had to
register with the Ministry of Culture, and all teaching posts were
threatened for anyone who was sympathetic to communism. Soon
after Tschichold had taken up a teaching post in Munich at the
behest of Paul Renner, they both were denounced as "cultural
Bolshevists". Ten days after the Nazis surged to power in March
1933, Tschichold and his wife were arrested. During the arrest,
Soviet posters were found in his flat, casting him under suspicion
of collaboration with communists. All copies of Tschichold's books
were seized by the Gestapo "for the protection of the German
people". After six weeks a policeman somehow found him tickets
for Switzerland, and he and his family managed to escape Nazi
Germany in August 1933.

Apart from two longer stays in England in 1937 (at the invitation
of the Penrose Annual), and 19471949 (at the invitation of Ruari
McLean, the British typographer, with whom he worked on the
design of Penguin Books), Tschichold lived in Switzerland for the
rest of his life. Jan Tschichold died in the hospital at Locarno in
1974.[1]
Titlepage for Typographische Gestaltung
written and designed by Jan Tschichold using
Design City Medium and Bodoni. Published in 1932
by the Benno Schwabe & Co. publishing
Tschichold had converted house.
to Modernist design
principles in 1923 after
visiting the first Weimar Bauhaus exhibition. He became a leading
advocate of Modernist design: first with an influential 1925 magazine
supplement; then a 1927 personal exhibition; then with his most noted
work Die neue Typographie. This book was a manifesto of modern
design, in which he condemned all typefaces but sans-serif (called
Grotesk in Germany). He also favoured non-centered design (e.g., on
title pages), and codified many other Modernist design rules. He
The Van de Graaf canon used in book advocated the use of standardised paper sizes for all printed matter,
design to divide a page in pleasing and made some of the first clear explanations of the effective use of
proportions, was popularized by Jan different sizes and weights of type in order to quickly and easily
Tschichold in his book The Form of the convey information. This book was followed with a series of practical
Book. manuals on the principles of Modernist typography which had a wide
influence among ordinary workers and printers in Germany. Yet,
despite his visits to England just before the war, only about four
articles by Tschichold had been translated into English by 1945.

Although Die neue Typographie remains a classic, Tschichold slowly abandoned his rigid beliefs from around
1932 onwards (e.g. his Saskia typeface of 1932, and his acceptance of classical Roman typefaces for body-
type) as he moved back towards Classicism in print design. He later condemned Die neue Typographie as too
extreme. He also went so far as to condemn Modernist design in general as being authoritarian and inherently
fascistic.

Between 19471949 Tschichold lived in England where he oversaw the redesign of 500 paperbacks published
by Penguin Books, leaving them with a standardized set of typographic rules, the Penguin Composition
Rules.[3] Although he gave Penguin's books (particularly the Pelican range) a unified look and enforced many
of the typographic practices that are taken for granted today, he allowed the nature of each work to dictate its
 look, with varied covers and title pages. In working for a firm that
made cheap mass-market paperbacks, he was following a line of work
in cheap popular culture forms (e.g. film posters)that he had
always pursued during his career.

His abandonment of Modernist principles meant that, even though he

was living in Switzerland after the war, he was not at the centre of the
post-war Swiss International Typographic Style. Unimpressed by the
use of realist or neo-grotesque typefaces, which he saw as a revival of
poorly-designed models, his survey of typefaces in advertising
Depiction of the proportions in a medieval deliberately made no mention of such designs, save for a reference to
manuscript. According to Jan Tschichold: 'survivals from the nineteenth-century which have recently enjoyed a
"Page proportion 2:3. Margin proportions short-lived popularity.'[4]
1:1:2:3. Text area proportioned in the
Golden Section."[2]
Typefaces
Between 1926 and 1929, he designed a universal alphabet to
clean up the few multigraphs and non-phonetic spellings in the
German language. For example, he devised brand new characters
to replace the multigraphs ch and sch. His intentions were to
change the spelling by systematically replacing eu with oi, w with
v, and z with ts. Long vowels were indicated by a macron below
them, though the umlaut was still above. The alphabet was
presented in one typeface, which was sans-serif and without capital
letters.

Typefaces Tschichold designed include:

Transit (1931) for "Lettergieterij Amsterdam, voorheen

Tetterode",
Saskia (1931/1932), for: Schelter & Giesecke, Leipzig
Zeus (1931)
Uhertype-Standard-Grotesk (1931), for an early
phototypesetting machine. Essentially a modified Gill
Sans.[5][6]
Sabon (1966/1967) [1].

Sabon was designed to be a typeface that would give the same

reproduction on both Monotype and Linotype systems and
therewere also matrices made for typefoundries. All type produced
could be interchanged. It was used early after its release by
Bradbury Thompson to set the Washburn College Bible. A Sabon
Next was later released by Linotype as an interpretation of
Tschichold's original Sabon.
Sabon typeface designed by Tschichold, and
Bibliography released in 1967. One of its earliest uses was
by Bradbury Thompson in setting the
Washburn College Bible.
Die neue Typographie. Ein Handbuch fr zeitgem
Schaffende, Verlag des Bildungsverbandes der Deutschen
Buchdrucker, Berlin 1928.
(in German) Eine Stunde Druckgestaltung: Grundbegriffe der Neuen Typografie in Bildbeispielen fr
Setzer, Werbefachleute, Drucksachenverbraucher und Bibliofilen, Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Dr.
Fritz Wedekind & Co., 1930
Eine Stunde Druckgestaltung, Akademischer Verlag Dr. Fritz Wedekind & Co., Stuttgart 1930.
Schriftschreiben fr Setzer, Klimsch & Co., Frankfurt a.M. 1931.
 Typografische Entwurfstechnik, Akademischer Verlag Dr Fritz Wedekind & Co., Stuttgart 1932.
Typografische Gestaltung, Benno Schwabe & Co., Basel 1935.
Gute Schriftform, Lehrmittelverlag des Erziehungsdepartements, Basel 1941/42, 1943/44 u. 1945/46.
Geschichte der Schrift in Bildern, Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1941 u. 1946. Auch: Hauswedell, Hamburg
1951 u. 1961. Engl.: An Illustrated History of Lettering and Writing, o.V., London 1947.
Chinesisches Gedichtpapier vom Meister der Zehnbambushalle, Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1947.
Was jemand vom Buchdruck wissen sollte, Birkhuser-Verlag, Basel 1949.
Schatzkammer der Schreibkunst, Birkhuser Verlag, Basel 1949 (2. Auflage).
Im dienste des buches, SGM-Bcherei, St. Gallen 1951.
Chinesischer Farbendruck aus dem Lehrbuch des Senfkorngartens, Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1941 u. 1951.
Schriftkunde, Schreibbungen und Skizzieren fr Setzer, Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1942. Auch:
Schriftkunde, Schreibbungen und Skizzieren [erweiterte Auflage, S. 79109], Verlag des Druckhauses
Tempelhof, Berlin 1951.
Der Holzschneider und Bilddrucker Hu Cheng-yen, Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1943 u. 1952.
Chinesische Farbendrucke der Gegenwart, Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1944 u. 1953. Engl.: Chinese Colour
Printing of the present day, o.V., London/ New York 1953.
Erfreuliche Drucksachen durch gute Typografie, Otto Maier-Verlag, Ravensburg 1960 [Reprint]. Auch:
Maro-Verlag, Augsburg 1988, ISBN 3-87512-403-0.
(in German) Meisterbuch der Schrift: Ein Lehrbuch mit vorbildlichen Schriften aus Vergangenheit und
Gegenwart fr Schriftenmaler, Graphiker, Bildhauer, Graveure, Lithographen, Verlagshersteller,
Buchdrucker, Architekten und Kunstschulen (3. unv. Nachdruck der 2. ed.), Ravensburg: Otto Maier-
Verlag, 1965, ISBN 3-473-61100-X
Die Bildersammlung der Zehnbambushalle, Eugen-Rentsch-Verlag, Zrich/Stuttgart 1970.
foto-auge [zusammen mit Franz Roh], Akademischer Verlag Dr. Fritz Wedekind & Co., Stuttgart 1929
[Reprint]. Auch: Ernst Wasmuth, Tbingen 1973.
Ausgewhlte Aufstze ber Fragen der Gestalt des Buches und der Typographie, Birkhuser-Verlag,
Basel 1975 u. 1987, ISBN 3-7643-1946-1.
De proporties van het boek (Die Proportionen des Buches), Amsterdam, Amst., Intergrafia, 1955, de
buitenkant, 1991
Schriften: 19251974 Band 1/2. Berlin, 1992.
Jan Tschichold, Posters of the Avantgarde, Martijn F. Le Coultre, Alston W. Purvis, VK-projects, Laren,
The Netherlands, 2007, ISBN 978-90-5212-003-4
Jan Tschichold. Master Typographer. Thames & Hudson. 2011

See also
Bauhaus
Canons of page construction
List of AIGA medalists
Typography

Sources
Aynsley, Jeremy. Graphic Design in Germany, 18901945 (2000. University of California Press)
ISBN 0-520-22796-4.
Blackwell, Lewis. 20th Century Type (2004. Yale University Press) ISBN 0-300-10073-6.
Gnter Bose und Erich Brinkmann (Hrsg.): Jan Tschichold: Schriften 19251974. (Zwei Bnde) Band 1:
19251947, Band 2: 19481974, Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, 1992. ISBN 3-922660-37-1.
Hans Rudolf Bosshard: Max Bill kontra Jan Tschichold. Der Typografiestreit in der Moderne. Niggli,
Zrich, 2012, ISBN 978-3-721-20833-7.
Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style (1992. Hartley & Marks) ISBN 0-88179-033-8.
Burke, Christopher. Active literature. Jan Tschichold and New Typography (2007. Hyphen Press)
ISBN 978-0-907259-32-9.
de Jong, Cees W., Alston W. Purvis, Martijn F. Le Coultre, Richard B. Doubleday and Hans Reichart. Jan
TschicholdMaster Typographer: His Life, Work & Legacy (2008. Thames & Hudson) ISBN 978-0-500-
51398-9.
 Doubleday, Richard B. Jan Tschichold, Designer: The Penguin Years (2006. Oak Knoll Press & Lund
Humphries) ISBN 978-1-58456-178-1; ISBN 1-58456-178-5.
Gerd Fleischmann: Tschichold na und?, Gttingen, Wallstein Verlag, 2013 (sthetik des Buches; 3),
ISBN 978-3-8353-1353-8
Friedl, Friederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An encyclopedic survey of type design
and techniques through history (1998. Black Dog & Leventhal) ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
Leben und Werk des Typographen Jan Tschichold, mit einer Einleitung von Werner Klemke, der
Bibliographie aller Schriften und fnf groen Aufstzen von Jan Tschichold sowie ber zweihundert, teils
bunten Abbildungen. Dresden : Verlag der Kunst, 1977.
Macmillan, Neil. An AZ of Type Designers (2006. Yale University Press) ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
McLean, Ruari. Jan Tschichold: A Life in Typography (1997. Princeton Architectural Press) ISBN 1-
56898-084-1
Julia Meer: Neuer Blick auf die Neue Typographie Die Rezeption der Avantgarde in der Fachwelt der
1920er Jahre. Transcript, Bielefeld 2015, insbes. S. 206216 und 219 ff. ISBN 978-3-8376-3259-0.
Meggs, Philip B. History of Graphic Design (1998. John Wiley & Sons) ISBN 0-470-04265-6.
IDEA Magazine No 321: Works of Jan Tschichold. [2]

References
1. Jan TschicholdPosters of the AvantGarde written by Martijn F. Le Coultre and Alston W. Purvis page
21
2. Jan TschicholdPosters of the AvantGarde written by Martijn F. Le Coultre and Alston W. Purvis, p. 43,
Fig 4. "Framework of ideal proportions in a medieval manuscript without multiple columns. Determined
by Jan Tschichold 1953. Page proportion 2:3. margin proportions 1:1:2:3, Text area proportioned in the
Golden Section. The lower outer corner of the text area is fixed by a diagonal as well."
3. Richard Doubleday. "Jan Tschichold at Penguin Books" (http://www.dis.uia.mx/conference/2005/HTMs-
PDFs/PenguinBooks.pdf) (PDF).
4. Hollis, Richard (2006). Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
5. Horn, Frederick A. (1936). "Gutenberg on his Metal: c" (http://magazines.iaddb.org/issue/CAI/1936-02-0
1/edition/null/page/42). Art & Industry. pp. 423. Retrieved 12 August 2017.
6. Richard Hollis (2006). Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style, 1920-
1965 (https://books.google.com/books?id=7XO-LMDo4yQC&pg=PA199). Laurence King Publishing.
p. 199. ISBN 978-1-85669-487-2.

External links
www.tschichold.de (requires Flash plug-in).
Short biography of Jan Tschichold at Textism.
Jan Tschichold: a titan of typography
Finding aid for Jan and Edith Tschichold papers, Getty Research Institute

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jan_Tschichold&oldid=799519077"

This page was last edited on 8 September 2017, at 05:49.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may
apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered
trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.