Jan Tschichold

• Education: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (Leipzig Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Production)
• Significance: Jan Tschichold was a German-born Swiss typographer, graphic designer, and author. He was considered a pioneer in typography during the twentieth century. Tschichold focused much of his career on developing and setting standards for using modern typeface and layout styles, but later he changed his mind and reverted to the classic styles.

Background

Jan Tschichold was born on April 2, 1902, in Leipzig, Germany, to Franz and Maria Zapff Tschichold. His father was a calligrapher and worked as a signwriter. Tschichold received training in calligraphy from his father, who enlisted him to help him make signs. He initially wanted to become an artist, but his parents deterred him from pursuing this dream.

Tschichold eventually decided to concentrate on a career in typography. He attended the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (Leipzig Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Production), but he did not study fine arts or architecture and instead focused on typography. He spent much time reading about calligraphy, ornamental script, and writing. He also studied bookbinding, engraving, and woodcutting. He was close to several of his professors, who mentored him. After he finished school, he spent time as a teaching assistant and lecturer.

Tschichold then began work as a freelance designer. His lack of formal training in fine arts and architecture showed in his preference for stock fonts. Most typographers of the time favored modern custom fonts. He continued to favor traditional fonts, such as scripts.

In the 1920s, he visited the Bauhaus art school, where he became fascinated with sans serif, known as Grotesk in Germany. He liked the clean look of straight letters with little flare. He incorporated this font style with white space, thick rules, and straight lines into his work. Tschichold also studied page design and experimented with different ways to lay out pages, using a page’s size and shape to determine how the text should fall on it. He showcased his designs and fonts in an exhibition and published an article about modern designs in 1925.

Tschichold received a teaching job around this time. He taught classes in typography and calligraphy. In 1928, he published Die Neue Typographie (The New Typography). In it, he introduced a new layout design that rejected traditional symmetrical columns and instead favored asymmetrical blocks of type and illustrations such as photomontage. He also discussed why standardized paper sizes were important, and how different sizes and weights of fonts could be used to express information.

Life’s Work

When Adolf Hitler assumed power in Germany, he required designers to register with the Ministry of Culture. The Nazi Party targeted Tschichold because he had supported a modern, un-German typography design. Officials arrested and jailed him for having books and other materials that they considered improper and a threat to Hitler’s rule. With some help, Tschichold secured passports for himself and his family, and they traveled to Basel, Switzerland.

He found odd jobs and part-time work in Switzerland at a publishing company but struggled to find a job that interested him. Jobs in his field were in short supply when World War II (1939–1945) began, so Tschichold instead turned to writing about typography. He published several works, including Typographische Gestaltung (Typographic Design), in 1935.

By this time, Tschichold had begun to change his mind about the modern typography and layout design styles he had championed. He loosened his rigid rules and adopted more traditional Roman typeface styles. He also went back to favoring symmetrical layouts. He then began to speak out against the designs he had introduced in Die Neue Typographie and condemned modern designs altogether. In 1942, he published Schriftkunde, Schreibübungen und Skizzieren für Setzer.

In the late 1940s, Penguin Books in London, England, invited Tschichold to work on a book redesign project. He was tasked with establishing a universal style for the company to use for all its books. He traveled to England, where he first worked on redesigning the inside of the books, from the fonts to the margins. He wrote up a guide for the editors at Penguin to use called Penguin Composition Rules. It set rules for margins, font size, punctuation, capitalization, and footnotes. Tschichold was a perfectionist, and the process took more than one year to complete. He then worked on redesigning the book covers, which included revising the Penguin logo. The project was completed in 1949, and Tschichold returned to Switzerland.

Back home, he continued to author books, such as Willkürfreie Massverhältnisse der Buchseite und des Satzspiegels in 1962. In 1952, he published Meisterbuch der Schrift. In 1967, Tschichold traveled to the United States, where he gave lectures at several universities, including Harvard and Yale. He died on August 11, 1974, in Locarno, Switzerland.

Impact

Tschichold was considered one of the leading typographers of the twentieth century. Even though later in life he denounced modern type styles and layout designs for the classic ones, he was best known for setting modern typography standards. During his career, he created several fonts, including Transit (1931), Saskia (1931), Zeus (1931), and Sabon (1967). Since 1997, the annual Jan Tschichold Award has been given to an individual, group, or institution for outstanding book design achievement.

In 2019, an exhibition of his works entitled “Jan Tschichold and the New Typography” was hosted by the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. A 2023 international conference, “Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography: Its Roots and Impact on National Scenes,” was held at ÉCAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, which is based in Switzerland. The purpose of the conference was to put Tschichold’s seminal work into context. In 2025, the London exhibition Jan Tschichold: Shaping Typography 1925–2025 marked the centenary of Tschichold’s Elementare Typographie. In 2026, the Jan Tschichold Award was given to the Franco-Swiss design duo Coline Sunier and Charles Mazé.

Personal Life

Tschichold married Edith Kramer in 1926. Their son Peter was born in 1929. Tschichold became a Swiss citizen in 1942.

Bibliography

“Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé.” Swiss Culture Awards, Federal Office of Culture, www.schweizerkulturpreise.ch/en/jan-tschichold-award-2026. Accessed 26 May 2026.

“Font Designer—Jan Tschichold.” Linotype, www.linotype.com/609/jan-tschichold.html. Accessed 26 May 2026.

“Jan Tschichold Exhibition in London.” Commercial Type, 20 June 2025, commercialtype.com/news/jan_tschichold_exhibition. Accessed 26 May 2026.

“Jan Tschichold.” Famous Graphic Designers, www.famousgraphicdesigners.org/jan-tschichold. Accessed 26 May 2026.

“Jan Tschichold, the TDC, and a Mystery.” TDC, 2019, tdc.org/news/jan-tschichold-the-tdc-and-a-mystery/. Accessed 26 May 2026.

“Jan Tschichold—Typographic Genius.” Retinart, retinart.net/artist-profiles/jan-tschichold. Accessed 26 May 2026.

McLean, Ruari. “Chronology.” Jan Tschichold: A Life in Typography, Princeton Architectural Press, 1997, pp. 125–26.

Penney, Margaret. “Designer Focus: Jan Tschichold.” Sessions College, 7 Mar. 2017, www.sessions.edu/notes-on-design/designer-focus-jan-tschichold. Accessed 26 May 2026.

Sanchez, Aranza. “Roots and Influences: Conference on Jan Tschichold’s ‘The New Typography.’” ndion, 13 Apr. 2023, ndion.de/en/roots-and-influences-conference-on-jan-tschicholds-the-new-typography/. Accessed 26 May 2026.