Born in 1902 in Leipzig and died in 1974 in Locarno, Jan Tschichold was the son of a sign painter. Deeply affected by the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, he became one of the theorists of modern typography. Arrested by the Nazis in 1933, he went into exile in Basel, Switzerland.
Vision
In his book Die neue Typographie, published in 1928, Tschichold advocated asymmetrical, functional, sans serif typography. He later distanced himself from this dogmatism and returned to classical, symmetrical typography.
Works
His work includes Sabon, as well as the redesign of Penguin books between 1947 and 1949, accompanied by typesetting rules that became a landmark.
Legacy
He is one of the great figures of 20th-century typography, both a pioneer of modernism and a defender of tradition. His writings are still studied in every design school.