Jan Tschichold

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Jan Tschichold (around 1930). Photo by Eduard Wasow

Jan Tschichold , born as Johannes Tzschichhold , also Iwan Tschichold and Ivan Tschichold (born April 2, 1902 in Leipzig ; †  August 11, 1974 in Locarno , Switzerland ), was a German calligrapher , typographer , type designer, poster designer , author and teacher. Tschichold was one of the spokesmen for the New Typography . His best-known font design is the Sabon , an Antiqua .

biography

Johannes Tzschichhold was born in Leipzig in 1902 as the son of a script painter and was involved in calligraphy from an early age. In 1919 he began studying in Hermann Delitsch's writing class at the Leipzig Academy of the Arts . Due to his extraordinary achievements, he soon advanced to the master class of the rector Walter Tiemann - a typeface designer at the Gebr.-Klingspor foundry - and was given the task of teaching his fellow students. At the same time, he received his first orders for the Leipziger Messe and in 1923 set up as a typographic consultant for a printing company.

Book cover designed by Jan Tschichold (1942)

So far only concerned with historical and traditional typography, his work took a completely new direction after his first visit to the Bauhaus : Tzschichhold got to know important artists such as László Moholy-Nagy , El Lissitzky , Kurt Schwitters and others, whose endeavors it was within the framework of the new ones Typography of the Bauhaus to break up the schemes of conventional typography, to find new modes of expression and to arrive at a much more experimental way of working. At the same time, however, they wanted to standardize, simplify and proceed more practically. Tzschichhold enthusiastically followed the new principles, even calling himself Iwan and (simplified) Tschichold out of sympathy for the currents mainly coming from the East .

Due to his enthusiasm and professional competence, he became one of the most important representatives of New Typography . In contrast to others, he did not completely fall out of the historical and technically justified framework, but made the avant-garde ideas generally usable. In a much-praised special issue of Typographische Mitteilungen from 1925 with the title Elementary Typography , he put the new approaches together in theses.

Jan Tschichold autograph 1955

This was followed by a phase of application: in 1926 Paul Renner - the creator of the Futura - appointed him to the Munich master school for typography . Here he called himself Jan Tschichold at the urging of the authorities . Among other things, a series of posters was created for the Phoebus Palace in Munich . Many film posters for this largest German film palace shaped the city's public space: clear, cut-out, e.g. T. bold font. Beams that emphasize the surface, but do not divide it up, and again and again diagonals.

In 1929 he designed a font that was supposed to translate the linguistic sounds better than the traditional alphabet, with some very idiosyncratic characters. In 1931 he designed the fonts Zeus , Transito , and Saskia as well as the Uhertype-Standard-Grotesk for an early phototypesetting system. With Schwitters and many others, he founded the “Ring neue Werbegestalter” in 1928.

In Germany, New Typography came to an abrupt end in 1933 when power was handed over to the Nazis - Tschichold himself emigrated to Switzerland. Shocked by the ease with which the German fascists misused the modern design for propaganda purposes, Tschichold now orientated himself on humanistic models. The use of Antiqua fonts, typographical ornamentation and axial typesetting are features of this classic-modern phase. In this context, Tschichold had a dispute with Max Bill , a proponent of New Typography , in 1946 in the Typographische Mitteilungen .

In 1943 Tschichold launched the “The Most Beautiful Swiss Books” competition in the specialist journal Schweizer Buchhandel , which took place for the first time the following year and is still supported today by the Swiss Association of Publishers and the Federal Office of Culture.

Tschichold worked for the Birkhäuser Verlag in Basel as a book manufacturer and went to England for two years in 1947, where he worked for Penrose Annual and redesigned the Penguin Books and developed a concept for their typographic designer; he was also responsible for the typography of the King Penguin Books series, which has been published since 1939 and based on the German Insel-Bücherei . In 1947 he wrote the Penguin Composition Rules , which he translated back into German in Switzerland and reformulated for Switzerland. Tschichold was responsible for the design of the German complete edition of the works of Wladimir Solowjow , which was published by Erich Wewel Verlag from 1953 and whose first published volume VII was awarded at the competition for the “Most Beautiful Books”.

Jan Tschichold (1963), photo by Erling Mandelmann

In 1964, his works were shown in the graphics department at documenta III in Kassel . In 1966 the Sabon was created , named after the Garamond student Jakob Sabon , who brought the Garamond to Frankfurt, a Renaissance Antiqua in the Garamond style , which is characterized by its clear typeface with a relatively long center length for a Garamond. The peculiarity of this work was that they all three then existing metal type systems (hand set Zeilenguss- ( Linotype ) and Letterguss- ( Monotype looked exactly alike) machine set), the typeface was therefore not affected by their technical characteristics.

In 1965 Tschichold was honored with the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Leipzig for his services to the font .

In June 2019 it became known that the heirs had given Tschichold's estate as a gift to the German Museum of Books and Writing of the German National Library in Leipzig . It will be digitized there with funding from the German Research Foundation .

Fonts

  • Transito ( Amsterdam type foundry , 1931)
  • Saskia (Schelter & Giesecke, Leipzig 1931)
  • Zeus (1931)
  • Uhertype-Standard-Grotesk (1931)
  • Sabon (1967)

See also

Works

  • The new typography. A handbook for contemporary workers , publishing house of the Educational Association of German Book Printers, Berlin 1928.
  • with Franz Roh : photo eye. Academic publisher Dr. Fritz Wedekind & Co., Stuttgart 1929. Reprint: Ernst Wasmuth, Tübingen 1973.
  • One hour of print design. Basic concepts of the New Typography in picture examples for typesetters, advertising professionals, consumers of printed matter and bibliographies . Academic publisher Dr. Fritz Wedekind & Co., Stuttgart 1930.
  • Lettering for typesetters. Klimsch & Co., Frankfurt am Main 1931.
  • Typographic design technique. Academic publishing house Dr Fritz Wedekind & Co., Stuttgart 1932.
  • Typographic design. Benno Schwabe & Co., Basel 1935.
  • Chinese color print from the textbook of the mustard seed garden. Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1941 a. 1951.
  • History of writing in pictures. Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1941 a. 1946. - Also: Hauswedell, Hamburg 1951 a. 1961. - Engl .: An Illustrated History of Lettering and Writing. undated, London 1947.
  • Good writing. Lehrmittelverlag des Bildungsdepartements, Basel 1941/42, 1943/44 a. 1945/46.
  • Literature, writing exercises and sketching for typesetters. Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1942. - Also: literacy, writing exercises and sketching. [Extended edition, pp. 79–109.] Verlag des Druckhauses Tempelhof, Berlin 1951.
  • The wood cutter and picture printer Hu Cheng-yen , Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1943 a. 1952.
  • Chinese color prints of the present. Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1944 a. 1953. - English: Chinese Color Printing of the present day. o. V., London / New York 1953.
  • Chinese poem paper from the master of the ten bamboo hall. Holbein-Verlag, Basel 1947.
  • Treasury of penmanship. 2nd Edition. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1949.
  • What everyone should know about printing. Birkhäuser-Verlag, Basel 1949.
  • In the service of the book. SGM library, St. Gallen 1951.
  • Master book of writing. A textbook with exemplary fonts from the past and present for type painters, graphic artists, sculptors, engravers, lithographers, publishers, book printers, architects and art schools . Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1979, ISBN 3-473-61100-X (first edition: 1952, reprint of the 2nd, revised edition from 1965).
  • Pleasing printed matter thanks to good typography. Otto Maier-Verlag, Ravensburg 1960. - Also: Maro-Verlag, Augsburg 1988 [Reprint], ISBN 3-87512-403-0 .
  • The picture collection of the ten bamboo hall. Eugen Rentsch Verlag, Zurich / Stuttgart 1970.
  • Selected essays on questions of the shape of the book and typography. Birkhäuser-Verlag, Basel 1975 a. 1987, ISBN 3-7643-1946-1 .

literature

  • Jeremy Aynsley: Graphic Design in Germany, 1890–1945. University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 0-520-22796-4 .
  • Lewis Blackwell: 20th Century Type. Yale University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-300-10073-6 .
  • Günter Bose, Erich Brinkmann (eds.): Jan Tschichold: Schriften 1925–1974. (Two volumes) Volume 1: 1925-1947. Volume 2: 1948-1974. Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-922660-37-1 .
  • Hans Rudolf Bosshard : Max Bill versus Jan Tschichold. The typography dispute in modern times. Niggli, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7212-0833-7 .
  • Christopher Burke: Active literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography. Hyphen Press, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-907259-32-9 .
  • Cees W. de Jong, Alston W. Purvis, Martijn F. Le Coultre, Richard B. Doubleday, Hans Reichart: Jan Tschichold — Master Typographer: His Life, Work & Legacy. Thames & Hudson, 2008, ISBN 978-0-500-51398-9 .
  • Richard B. Doubleday: Jan Tschichold, Designer: The Penguin Years. Oak Knoll Press & Lund Humphries, 2006, ISBN 1-58456-178-5 .
  • Gerd Fleischmann : Tschichold - so what? (= Aesthetics of the book. 3). Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1353-8 .
  • Friederich Friedl, Nicholas Ott, Bernard Stein: Typography: An encyclopedic survey of type design and techniques through history. Black Dog & Leventhal, 1998, ISBN 1-57912-023-7 .
  • Stephanie Jacobs, Patrick Rössler (eds.): Jan Tschichold - a typographer of the century? Glimpses of the estate , Göttingen: Wallstein 2019, ISBN 978-3-8353-3470-0 .
  • The life and work of the typographer Jan Tschichold, with an introduction by Werner Klemke, the bibliography of all writings and five large essays by Jan Tschichold as well as over two hundred, partly colorful illustrations. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1977.
  • Neil Macmillan: To A – Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-300-11151-7 .
  • Ruari McLean: Jan Tschichold: A Life in Typography. Princeton Architectural Press, 1997, ISBN 1-56898-084-1 .
  • Martijn F. Le Coultre, Alston W. Purvis: Jan Tschichold. Avant-garde posters. Catalog with 150 color illustrations. Birkhäuser 2007, ISBN 978-3-7643-7603-1 .
  • Julia Meer: A new look at the new typography - The reception of the avant-garde in the professional world of the 1920s. Transcript, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-3259-0 , in particular pp. 206-216 and 219 ff.
  • Philip B. Meggs: History of Graphic Design. John Wiley & Sons, 1998, ISBN 0-470-04265-6 .
  • IDEA Magazine No. 321: Works of Jan Tschichold. ( idea-mag.com ).
  • Martijn F. Le Coultre, Alston W. Purvis: Jan Tschichold, Posters of the Avantgarde. VK-projects, Laren, Netherlands 2007, ISBN 978-90-5212-003-4 .
  • Alain Weill: Encyclopédie de l'affiche. Editions Hazan, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-7541-0582-8 , pp. 302-303.

Web links

Commons : Jan Tschichold  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Newspaper articles (available online)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Beat Koelliker: "The Most Beautiful Swiss Books". An idea and its dynamism - 1943 and today. In: The changing book industry. orell füssli Verlag AG, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-280-02402-1 , pp. 200-201.
  2. ↑ Gerd Fleischmann: Tschichold - so what? Göttingen 2013, p. 25ff. with a comparison of the Engl. and German text.
  3. ^ Database of the Book Art Foundation
  4. ↑ The Jan Tschichold estate will be digitized with DFG funding. German National Library, June 13, 2019, accessed on August 17, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Tschichold, Jan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tzschichhold, Johannes (maiden name); Tschichold, Iwan; Tschichold, Ivan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German calligrapher, typographer, type designer, poster designer, author and teacher
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1974
Place of death Locarno , Switzerland