Who is Jan Tschichold?

Jan was born in Germany in 1902. He taught illustration at age 14. He is a typographer who was trained in the art of calligraphy which set him aside from others of his time. Because he and his wife were arrested due to the Nazis believing that he was working with communists, he had to escape to Switzerland. He lived there for the rest of his life. His work was very modernist and he became a leading advocate of modernist design because of his 1925 magazine supplement and a 1927 personal exhibition. His most noted work is Die neue Typographie. Here he condemned all typefaces except for sans-serif. He disliked centered design. He helped to standardize paper sizes and understood how different sizes and weights of paper effected the end product. 

In 1932 he slowly moved to more Classicism ideals in design. This was because he thought modernist design was too authoritarian. He also designed a universal alphabet. Tschichold designed Transit, Saskia, Zeus, and Sabon. He spent time with Penguin Books where he created a standardized method for their covers. He also established a type hierarchy. Many people loved his views on design, but there were people who disagreed greatly with him. No matter how the people felt, everyone knew of him. 

He redesigned around 500 books at penguin. After retiring from penguin, he wrote another book titled Arbitrary Measurement Relations of the Book Page. He also released “Master Book of Typefaces”. He sadly died in August of 1974. He will forever be remembered because of his clever ideas and contributions to design.