In From the Tschichold
by Jon Lackman | 6 December 2010 | Books
In The New York Times Book Review, designer Steven Heller considers new books on typography. In the latest Journal of the Printing Historical Society (n. 15), Paul Shaw reviews several recent books on Jan Tschichold:
The most important and controversial typographer of the twentieth century was Jan Tschichold. He has been championed both by typographic radicals and by typographic conservatives … He was not the first to practise the new style but he was arguably the best … Indicative of Tschichold’s continued influence is a recent flurry of books on his life and work. They have added much to our knowledge of his full career, helping to peel back the careful façade he fashioned for himself and which earlier books perpetuated … Jan Tschichold: Posters of the Avantgarde is thoroughly researched. It even goes beyond the call of duty to place Tschichold’s posters within the context of modernist and avant-garde posters of the time [by] Cassandre, Zwart, the Stenberg Brothers, Paul Schuitema, Max Burchartz, Cesar Domela, Jean Carlu, Herbert Matter and Gustav Klutsis among others … [Christopher] Burke [author of Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography] puts Tschichold’s writings in perspective and context, telling us when Kurt Schwitters, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and others wrote their typographic texts and also coldly assessing the reception the ideas of the new typography met … Between 1928 and 1946 Tschichold went from being the leading exponent of the New Typography to an outcast of the movement [leading] to the historic dispute with Max Bill … Together these five books … provide an understanding of this influential typographer that can be matched only by the literature on Eric Gill and William Morris.
