You might not be familiar with Jan Tschichold's name, but the evidence of his work in typography is all around us. In 1928, heavily influenced by Bauhaus and Russian constructivism, Tschichold published The New Typography and laid out rules that, as Richard Hollis reports, are still the foundation of elegant design. Tschichold was only 26 at the time:
In the words of his subscription leaflet, Tschichold was connecting the
new typography to the "total complex of contemporary life". Its title
borrowed from Moholy-Nagy, the book set out a series of stern
foundational principles for good design: the use of sans-serif fonts, standardised paper sizes, photographs
rather than drawn illustrations, asymmetrical rather than centred
layouts. Partly as a result of Mondrian's influence, abstract art came
to play a large part in Tschichold's work. He used geometrical elements
and diagonal arrangements, not only in everyday jobbing printing –
business cards, letterheads and brochures – but also in a series of
cinema posters. Rarely in more than two colours, these designs
incorporate small half-tone photographs, never rectangular, but cut-out
as circles or silhouettes. The text, often hand-drawn, was always
sans-serif.
Those posters are objects of beauty, and you can see some examples of them as well as Tschichold's famous update of the Penguin paperback design in the gallery here. His work isn't flashy, and even a design nerd like myself has to look twice to spot the changes he made to the Penguins. He just made things look better. A lot better.
