Jan Tschichold

Jan Tschichold, a visionary and typeface genius did not only heavily impact the area he grew up in, Leipzig, Germany, but impacting the world of design and typeface designers around the world. Growing up as the song of a script writer, Franz Tschichold, he was exposed to typefaces, mainly old scripts, at a very early age. According to Linotype.com’s “In Honor of the 100^th Birthday of Jan Tschichold” article, he was already beginning to excel in scripts and typefaces by the age of 14, when he began teaching.

Jan was influenced greatly by Calligraphers and Ornamental Scripters such as Edward Johnston and Rudolf von Larisch early in his career. It took him a while to decide what he wanted to be growing up, but he eventually settled on being a professional type designer and setter and began attending the Academy of the Graphic Arts in Leipzig. As a student he was immersed in his craft and excelled greatly at it. At only 19 years old his professors were asking him to help teach some script writing classes to the school’s students, and was avidly working on commissioned pieces for his home town, Leipzig.

Tschichold was especially brilliant due to his ability to recognize faults in the current design world where authors and book designers were poorly laying out type and content. Taking these faults and developing new ways and new teaching of how to solve typeface problems and layouts was what made Tschichold begin to become more popular than he’d ever believe. His first publication, “Elementary Typography” was the first how-to guide to Tschichold’s design beliefs, which included the studies of symmetrical setting, abandoning traditional design rules, and his avid attention to sans serif fonts. This publication raised a lot of eyebrows, causing many people to fall in love with his work, as well as many people becoming furious about his views.

After moving to Berlin and later Munich to pursue his typography career, Jan soon found himself up against a massive obstacle, and a powerful one; the Nazi Government. They did not agree with his style of design, especially when he was designing posters in the Bauhaus style. He then was forced to flee Germany and settled in Switzerland where he needed to begin a new, hardship ridden live, where work was unappealing and opportunities were slim. In this time he worked a few jobs to stay afloat, did commission works on the side, and focused a lot of his time on writing another book.

Tschichold was beginning to become much more popular now and was contacted by some big names in the book world such as Oliver Simon, a famous book printer, and Penguin Publishing, a internationally known book publication. At this job he was assigned to completely redefine their current typesetting and style. After working there in London as these world renowned publication houses, he moved back to his home in Switzerland and began developing some of his greatest masterpieces which include his famous book “Master Book of Typefaces” and his most notable typeface, “Sabon”.

Sabon was a typeface that could stand the test of time, even after Tschichold’s death in 1974. The typeface was elegant, sophisticated and screamed a classic. It was designed in various formats such as Bold, Italics, Bold Italics, Roman, and OsF. Tschichold’s contribution to the design world in unarguable, and he will remain one of the greatest impacts to the world of type over his extended and excited career.

Bibliography

"In Honor of the 100th Birthday of Jan Tschichold." Linotype Font Feature. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2013.