Swiss Typography
Jasmine Branson
What is Swiss typography?
• Swiss style is a graphic design style developed in Switzerland
in the 50s. The design would be used from grids, sans-serif
typeface and ragged text. The style is also associated with
photography in place of illustrations or drawings.
Jan Tschichold
• Jan Tschichold was born in
Switzerland and developed the
skills of typography and book
design as well as being a teacher
and writer. The style of typography
that Tschichold concentrated on
the most was 1950s International
Typography Style, better known as
Swiss Style which consists of
emphasizing cleanliness,
readability and objectivity. To
obtain this design Tschichold
would use a grid, asymmetric
layouts, sans-serif typefaces and
ragged right text.
Typography created
• In the late 20s Tschichold designed a ‘universal alphabet’ to clean up the
few spellings in the German language, for example he created new
characters to replace phrases like ‘ch’ and ‘sch’. The alphabet was then
presented into one sans-serif typeface without capital letters. Some of the
most famous typography creations from Jan Tschichold were the typefaces
of Transit, Saskia and Zeus which were designed in 1931, and Sabon in 1966.
Penguin Books
• Jan Tschichold also went on to create the design of the famous Penguin
Books in the 1940s, using his own typefaces and a consistent theme through
out all of the books. Tschichold designed a template for all Penguin books
with designated positions for the title and author’s name with a line
between the two. He then finally went to produce rules regarding the
Penguin books, that the Typographers and Printers were to keep the same
style throughout.
Influences
• Tschichold was influenced by
Soviet Constructivism, especially
the work of designer El Lissitzky
and the Bauhaus exhibition and
went on to create and publish the
books ‘ Elementary Typography’ in
1925 and ‘The New Typography’ in
1928 which was greatly influenced
by the modernist movement.
These then both promoted the
functional San-serif typeface and
were both read among young
designers
During this time
• During the time of Swiss typography, there were other designs going on such as
packaging design of Kellogg’s and Budweiser and the front cover of Time Magazine
which all concentrated on geometric layout and San-serif typeface of advertising. As
of this, you can see clearly that the way other designs have created posters in the
same era have effected how Tschichold has created his designs.
Videos
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tsc2NfVjZ8
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuWhkSSQMeI
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxAlfm-JWwI