Monday, August 24, 2009

TYPE I: Jan Tschichold is...














Well, to start off, Jan Tschichold has written many of his own books, which shows that he is pretty important when it comes to Typography. He was born in Leipzig, Germany, April 2nd, 1902. He was the son of a sign painter and grew up "training as a calligrapher and designer at the Leipzig Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Production." from 1919 to 1921. After school, he freelanced as a lettering artist and designer. He is one of the most distinguished Typographers of this past century and is still extremely popular even though he past away in 1974. He has had great influence on the print industry and on many designers all across Europe and the United States. Tschichold was very much influenced by the unique style of Bauhaus, as well as by modern painters like László Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky. Jan Tschichold's The New Typography has been seen as the epitome of all books written on graphic design. Tschichold made it a point to stand out and get his ideas across and "intended to represent the rationalism of the modern age, was functional, aesthetically satisfying, and designed for reproduction by machine-type composition and newer printing technology." He is so imporant because his book became the manifesto of modern design. He was the first to bash on all font styles besides sans-serif. Tschichold was the creator of the universal alphebet and the typefaces that he created include: Transit (1931), Saskia (1931/1932), Zeus (1931), and Sabon (1966/1967). The Tschichold grid "consistes of explored subtle horizontal and vertical alignments, and used a limited range of fonts, type sizes, and type weights" (Roberts). Tschichold's work helped spread Modernist graphic design all throughout the world and is considered to be the basis of Typography.

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