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ABOUT

Jan Tschichold

Born in Leipzig (1902), died in Locarno, Switzerland (1974). Influential German type designer whose typefaces include these:

• Sabon (1964-1967, for Stempel). The most famous digital version of Sabon is Linotype's Sabon Next. See also Sabon eText Pro (2013, Linotype) and Salieri (2020, a free font by Daniel Benjamin Miller).
• Transit and Transito (1931). Transito has been remade by Nick Curtis in 2009 as Waddem Choo NF, and by Paulo Heitlinger in 2008 as Transito.
• Zeus (1931). Pleks Zeus (2008) is a revival of Zeus by Hans Munk.
• Saskia (1931, Schelter&Giesecke). Revived by Ralph M. Unger in 2016 as Saskia Pro.
• Uher Standard Grotesque.
• Between 1926 and 1929, he designed a "universal alphabet" to help with non-phonetic spellings in the German language. For example, he devised new characters to replace "ch" and "sch". Long vowels were indicated by a macron below them. The alphabet was presented in one typeface, which was sans-serif and without capital letters. Leicht und schnell konstruierbare Schrift (1930) is a Bauhaus-style geometric revived in 2008 by Sebastian Nagel as Iwan Reschniev. See also Architype Tschichold by The Foundry.

• Die neue Typographie (Berlin, 1928). Quote from this book: Type production has gone mad, with its senseless outpouring of new types. Only in degenerate times can personality (opposed to the nameless masses) become the aim of human development,
• Typographische Gestaltung (Basel 1935).
• Geschichte der Schrift in Bildern (Basel 1941).
• Schriftkunde, Schreibübungen und Skizzieren (Basel 1942, Berlin 1952).
• Schatzkammern der Schreibkunst (Basel 1946).
• Meisterbuch der Schrift (Ravensburg 1953).
• Erfreuliche Drucksachen durch gute Typographie (Ravensburg 1960).
• Willkürfreie Maßverhältnisse der Buchseite und des Satzspiegels (Basel 1962).
• Ausgewählte Aufsätze über Fragen der Gestalt des Buches und der Typography (Basel 1975).
• Jan Tschichold, Leben und Werk (Dresden 1977).
• Jan Tschichold. Schriften 1925-1974 (Berlin 1991).
• Recommended is this short essay entitled Consistent Correlation Between Book Page and Type Area.
• The book jan Tschichold. Vormveranderingen van het &-teken. In een hedendaagse context (Amsterdam, De Buitenkant, 1993) has contributions by Petr van Blokland, Peter Borgman, Bram de Does, Dick Dooijes, Paul Groenendaal, Martin Majoor, Karina Meister, Gerrit Noordzij, Helmut Salden and Gerard Unger.

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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in Switzerland ⦿ Unicase type design ⦿ German type scene ⦿ Nick Curtis ⦿ Books on type design ⦿ Bauhaus and type design ⦿ Garalde or Garamond typefaces ⦿ Fournier ⦿