- Jan Tschichold was one of the
many typographers influenced by the Bauhaus.
In 1923 when he was 21, he visited
an exhibition of work from the Bauhaus.
The exhibition profoundly changed
his way of thinking about typography.
Tschichold was trained as a traditional
calligrapher at the Leipzig Academy.
Before visiting the Bauhaus exhibition,
his work was symmetrical and based on classical typefaces.
For five years, after visiting the exhibition,
he refined his new approach to typography
and published Die Neue Typographie.
Die Neue Typographie promoted asymmetry,
san serif fonts, and repulsion to the degenerate
typefaces and arrangements of traditional typography.
Following the tenants of the Bauhaus,
Tschichold believed typography should never be decorative.
Its most important job was to relay
information as efficiently as possible.
There was no room for expressive and personal work.
For Tschichold, typography should be
asymmetrical, dynamic, and energetic.
This mirrored the modern world and the new ways of working.
Celebrating the machine rather than the human hand.
Proportions were tied to the golden section
and mathematical calculations determined the
placement and elements on a layout.
In the hands of a lesser typographer, this approach
could lead to utilitarian and beh-now solutions.
Tschichold added another layer onto the functional aspect,
he recognized the value of beauty
and incorporated the values of harmony
and spiritual content.
The new typography is characterized
by the use of sans serif fonts.
Preferably, one font in a range of weights and sizes.
Symmetrical layouts were not efficient as they forced
the content into one form regardless of the message.
Asymmetrical layouts provided a solution
that created better hierarchy.
Content drove the solution for efficient communication.
Like the other designers of the Bauhaus,
following the rules of modernism,
Tschichold favored photography.
As it was truly representational and precise.
Illustration was subjective.
His color palate was limited, working mostly
with black, white, red, and yellow.
Again, this removed the designer's role as an artist
choosing a wide range of colors.
It promoted the idea of a universal visual language.
Color existed to aid the viewer
in the communication and provided hierarchy only.
Negative space became an important element.
Tschichold also added rules, bars,
circles, and boxes to aid in efficient reading.
These also expressed a kinetic energy
connecting to the new age of the machine.
In 1933, the Nazis barged into
Tschichold's Munich apartment and arrested him and his wife.
He was accused of creating Bolshevik and un-German work.
After six weeks, he was released
and took his wife and four-year-old son to Switzerland.
Ironically, after the war, Tschichold
moved to London and rejected the new typography.
He now believed that designers should work
with humanist forms and integrate classical typography.
In 1946, he wrote that the new typography's
impatient attitude conforms to the German
bent for the absolute and its military will to regulate.
The objective of the new typography
was clarity, not decoration.
This philosophy became the guiding rule
to most of the typography we see today.
As information becomes more complex and dense,
take for example the barrage of information
on screen during the television news,
clarity becomes more important.
So in many ways, the new typography
is more relevant today than it was in 1923.