Jan Tschihold is...

Tschichold began his schooling the art of calligraphy and designing at the Leipzig Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Production. He was born in Germany in 1902 and died in 1974. He joined the Modernist movement after the 1923 exhibition of Bauhaus. He was arrested in 1933 by the Nazis for his ideas and media promotions. He was deemed a danger to the German people, which tells his followers something about how openly expressive he was with his ideas and how public he was with his art and type. Tschichold made many posters that express the avant-garde of New Typography. He is important for using serifless typefaces. These were important because they were revolutionary approaches to typography design. In 1946, Tschihold became the art director at Penguin Books.

The typefaces that Jan Tschihold is famous for are Transit, which he developed in 1931. Saskia which he worked on from 1931 to 1932. Zeus was also developed in 1931. His most recent typeface was produced in 1966/1997. It is called Sabon. The latter can be reproduced on both Monotype and Linotype systems.

Tschihold wrote a several books of his craft including The New Typography. It was first published in Germany in 1928. Many artists agree that this is the epitome of modern typography. This book includes Tschihold’s theories and guides the reader through different aspects of art including; architecture, art history, social criticisms, and even his take on photography as an art form. At the end of the book, Tschihold gives the reader guidelines to follow when using certain type groups and the size of the project or sheet.

A classic, and more traditional, typography book that Tschihold wrote is Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering. This book holds type and letters from the past and Tschohold’s own time. He selected by hand the one hundred and seventy letters and type. This book explores letters a

s an art form, and how that interpretation allows for good and bad design. Word spacing, line spacing, styles, groups of letters, and signs are looked at on a whole and individually within designs. It was first published in 1966.

Other works that Jan Tschihold contributed to or produced on his own include; The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design (Classic Typography Series), Asymmetric Typography, and Designing Books. Planning a Book. Atypographer’s Composition Rules. Fifty-Eight Examples by the Author. Of course, being an extremely influential artist and a corner stone in the twentieth century, other authors have jumped on the band wagon and written their own odes to this type master. Some document his famous posters while others, like Christopher Burk’s book, document Tschihold himself and his modernist take on typography.

The Tschihold grid was created, of course, by Jan Tschihold. It is a grid that uses a specific formula to create a layout that promotes proportion. It is supposed to help the designer to cre

ate clear compositions. It also allows for the gather of all design elements, such as graphics and texts. The Grid