DIE NEUE TYPOGRAPHIE
EIN HANDBUCH FUR ZEITGEMASS SCHAFFENDE
Jan Tschichold
Jan Tschichold: DIE NEUE TYPOGRAPHIE. EIN HANDBUCH FUR ZEITGEMASS SCHAFFENDE. Berlin: Verlag Des Bildungsverbandes Der Deutschen Buchdrucker, 1928. First edition [erstes bis fünftes tausend]. Small quarto. Text in German. Black cloth over flexible boards. Silver embossed titling to spine. 240 pp. Contemporary typographic examples printed in black and red throughout. Layout and typography by the author. Original black cloth-covered flexible boards are lightly worn with the silver titling to spine heavily rubbed [as usual]. Trivial spotting to a few leaves. A book that is virtually unknown in the first edition, and whose importance to the twentieth-century modern movement cannot be overstated. Rare. A very good or better copy.
We consider DIE NEUE TYPOGRAPHIE the most important and influential Graphic Design Book ever writtten.
6 x 8.5 hardcover book bound in full cloth with 240 pages and many typographic examples printed in black and red, and published by the Bildungsverband der Deutschen Buchdrucker, the educational wing of the German printing trade union. Contemporary readers and typographers will undoubtedly be surprised by this edition’s pedagogical nature, due to the lengthy shadow this book has cast over the Modern Design Movement in the eighty years since its publication.
Includes typographic examples by Jan Tschichold, El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Walter Dexel, Willi Baumeister, F. T. Marinetti, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Theo Van Doesburg, Max Burchartz, Sascha Stone, Piet Zwart, Kurt Schwitters, Herbert Bayer, Johannes Molzahn, Joost Schmidt, Johannes Canis, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Franz W. Seiwert, Lajos Kassak, Otto Baumberger, Karel Teige, John Heartfield, and others.
In this slim volume, the 26-year old Tschichold presented his manifesto of the principles and rules for a new typographic practice that summarized the contemporary avant-garde convictions about elemental forms and clarity of communication.
Tschichold’s principal claim for the new typography is that it is characteristic of the modern age. Writing at a time when many new mass produced products appeared on the market, his intention was to bring typography into line with these other manifestations of industrial culture. Similar to the Russian Constructivists, Tschichold lauds the engineer whose work is marked by “economy, precision,“ and the “use of pure constructional forms that correspond to the functions of the object.”
Contents (translated into English here from the published German):
- Introduction
- Growth and Nature of the New Typography
- The New World View
- The Old Typography (1440-1914): Retrospective and Criticism
- The New Art
- The History of the New Typography
- The Principles of the New Typography
- Photography and Typography
- New Typography and Standardization
- Principal Typographic Categories
- The Typographic Symbol
- The Business Letterhead
- The Half Letterhead
- Envelopes Without Windows
- Window Envelopes
- The Postcard
- The Postcard With Flap
- The Business Card
- The Visiting-Card
- Advertising Matter (Slips, Cards, Leaflets, Prospectuses, Catalogues)
- The Typo-Poster
- The Pictorial Poster
- Labels, Plates, and Frames
- Advertisements
- The Periodical
- The Newspaper
- The Illustrated Paper
- Tabular Matter
- The New Book
- Bibliography
- List of Addresses
From The New Typography, trans. Ruari McLean (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995) [first published in 1928]: "Working through a text according to these principles will usually result in a rhythm different from that of former symmetrical typography. Asymmetry is the rhythmic expression of functional design. In addition to being more logical, asymmetry has the advantage that its complete appearance is far more optically effective than symmetry."
"Hence the predominance of asymmetry in the New Typography. Not least, the liveliness of asymmetry is also an expression of our own movement and that of modern life; it is a symbol of the changing forms of life in general when asymmetrical movement in typography takes the place of symmetrical repose. This movement must not however degenerate into unrest or chaos. A striving for order can, and must, also be expressed in asymmetrical form. It is the only way to make a better, more natural order possible, as opposed to symmetrical from which does not draw its laws from within itself but from outside."<p>
Due to his solid training in typography, Tschichold was a much greater technician than either Lissitzky or Moholy-Nagy; his own assertions on modernist design were based on an intimate knowledge of typesetting techniques such as leading, spacing, and the overall arrangement of type on a page. One look at Moholy-Nagy’s essay titled (curiously enough) Die Neue Typographie in STAATLICHES BAUHAUS 1919-1923 (Bauhausverlag Weimar-Munchen, 1923, p. 141) clearly proves that Tschichold could run circles around the type cases of his peers.
Tschichold strongly believed in the Zeitgeist argument that each age creates its own uniquely appropriate forms. That belief allowed him to formulate a set of principles for his time and reject all prior work, regardless of its quality. One of the characteristics of the modern age for Tschichold was speed. he felt that printing must facilitate a quicker and more efficient mode of reading. Whereas the aim of the older typography was beauty, clarity was the purpose of the New Typography.
Jan Tschichold (German, 1902 – 1974) was a typographer, book designer, teacher and writer. Tschichold was the son of a provincial signwriter, and he was trained in calligraphy. This artisan background and calligraphic training set him apart from almost all other noted typographers of the time, since they had inevitably trained in architecture or the fine arts.
Tschichold's artisan background may help explain why he never worked with handmade papers and custom fonts as many typographers did, preferring instead to use stock fonts on a careful choice from commercial paper stocks. After the election of Hitler in Germany, all designers had to register with the Ministry of Culture, and all teaching posts were threatened for anyone who was sympathetic to communism.
After Tschichold took up a teaching post in Munich at the behest of Paul Renner, both he and Tschichold were denounced as "cultural Bolshevists.”Ten days after the Nazis surged to power in March 1933, Tschichold and his wife were arrested. During the arrest, Soviet posters were found in his flat, casting him under suspicion of collaboration with communists. All copies of Tschichold's books were seized by the Gestapo "for the protection of the German people.” After six weeks a policeman somehow found him tickets for Switzerland, and he and his family managed to escape Nazi Germany in August 1933. Apart from short visits to England in 1937-1938 (at the invitation of the Penrose Annual), and 1947-1949 (at the invitation of Ruari McLean, the British typographer, with whom he worked on the design of Penguin Books), he lived the rest of his life in Switzerland. Jan Tschichold died in the hospital at Locarno in 1974.