Jan Tschichold—Proponent of Asymmetry and Tradition
Born in Leipzig in 1902, Jan Tschichold was from boyhood exposed to letter forms, to their conversion into printing types and to their disposal in printed matter. His father being a designer and painter of letters, the boy early made himself useful in the studio. He dreamed of becoming a teacher of drawing, but his study of the lettering manuals of Edward Johnston and of Rudolf von Larisch brought him instead a hope of becoming a calligrapher and letterer. He studied at the Leipzig Akademie under Hermann Delitsch; he was soon entrusted with Delitsch’s evening classes, and he proceeded to become a graduate student at the Akademie under Walter Tiemann and Hugo Steiner-Prag. In those early years he worked steadily in the Insel Verlag’s design department, which has latterly summoned him back as a consultant. His taste and capacity for type composition were meanwhile being cultivated in the famous printing-house of Poeschel & Trepte, which had long been printing many important Insel editions. A Bauhaus exhibition in 1924 quickened his responses to design and brought him in 1926 to the notice of Paul Renner, who engaged him to teach typography and calligraphy at the Munich Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucker.
Like Renner, Tschichold too had been troubled by the decay of typography, which even after the First World War remained stubborn and rootless in its ineptitude despite the good example of Britain’s printing revival at the turn of the century. To lift the craft clear of its corrupt foundations—or non-foundations—the young Tschichold published a pamphlet, Elementare Typographie (1925) and followed this with Die Neue Typographie (1928). Together, these hold tracts opened every sleeping eye to the enormities so long accepted by the very nation whose Johann Gutenberg was still a revered name everywhere. Much of what those tracts contain remains true; but some of their conclusions and demands were grossly overdrawn and misconceived. The severest critic of these untruths today is their author himself. In defence he quotes a Chinese proverb: ‘In haste there is error.’
Tschichold still recalls his deep satisfaction when at 17 he saw by chance some English magazine pages set in Caslon type. By contrast, the busy and fussy German types and arrangements could only frustrate and exasperate him; and if he struck some wild resentful blows, his object was rather to restore some sanity than to set any rivers afire. His radical proposal was to scrap all the clutter and mediocrity of the then fashionable German types and to replace them with a single simple sanserif face, chiefly because its very spareness served to banish the nightmare and confusion that surrounded him. While admitting this to be a serious error, Tschichold pleads: ‘Very often error is creative. My errors were more fertile than I ever imagined. . . . It was a juvenile opinion to consider the sanserif as the most suitable or even the most contemporary typeface. A typeface first has to be legible, or rather readable; and a sanserif is certainly not the most legible typeface when set in quantity, let alone readable.’ The other novelty his book recommended was asymmetrical arrangement to replace symmetrical. This, like the sanserif dominance, was eagerly adopted by the younger graphic artists, and all went swimmingly well until ‘the profane year of 1933’. Tschichold was promptly accused of creating ‘un-German’ typography and ‘Kulturbol-schewismus’ in art; he and his wife were taken into ‘protective custody’, but Tschichold preferred refuge in Basle where he has lived since 1933.
In 1935 he wrote another book, Typographische Gestaltung, which he still calls a ‘much more prudent and still useful book’. Things had changed. ‘In time’, he says, ‘typographical matters took on a very different aspect. To my astonishment, I detected most shocking parallels between the teachings of Die Neue Typographie and National Socialism and Fascism. Obvious similarities consist in the ruthless restriction of typefaces, a parallel to Goebbels’ infamous ‘Gleichschaltung’ (political alignment) and the more or less military arrangements of lines. Because I did not want to be guilty of spreading the very ideas which had compelled me to leave Germany, I thought over again what a typographer should do.
Which typefaces are good, and what arrangement is the most practicable? By guiding the compositors of a large Basle printing office I learned a lot about practicability. Good typography has to be perfectly legible and, as such, the result of intelligent planning. The classical typefaces such as Garamond, Jenson, Baskerville and Bell are undoubtedly the most legible. Sanserif is good for certain cases of emphasis but is now used to the point of abuse. The occasions for using sanserifs are as rare as those for wearing obtrusive decorations.’ As to asymmetry, Tschichold still considers it a secret known to a group of initiates, and not easy to acquire since its faults leap at once to the reading eye. Symmetry is of course less vibrant, but also less risky, even for the inexperienced. In sum, symmetry and asymmetry both are useful, but asymmetry demands a longer and harder discipline.
Since 1933 Tschichold’s book and general typographic practice has been steadily along classical lines, tempered by a freedom that never exceeds the modesty of an ancillary craft. ‘The aim of typography,’ he says, ‘must not be expression, least of all selfexpression, but perfect communication achieved by skill. Taking over working principles from earlier times or from other typographers is not wrong but sensible. Typography is a servant and nothing more.’ Another commentator has lately put the matter more sharply by saying, ‘Self-expression is self-indulgence.’
As we have seen, Die Neue Typographie is a work of unequal merit. Yet it was rapturously embraced by the undisciplined as a gospel for all time. They saw this little book as the banner of a liberating pioneer. But, as Tschichold’s re-thinking of the fundamentals of typography brought forth a series of corrective tracts, his disciples became increasingly unhappy. Just as they felt they had solved all typographic problems for all time, here was the recreant Tschichold telling them to study closely the books of the typographic ancients and from them to learn anew the truly enduring principles of book design, so long forgotten or misunderstood. One disciple, a Swiss architect named Max Bill, in Typographische Monatsblätter blurts out the blunt accusation that Tschichold is a renegade from his own teaching, and he cites relevant passages to show the plain contradictions between the gospel of 1928 and the Tschichold practice since 1933. Making his reply, Tschichold sympathises with the disillusion felt by his disciples but, he asks in effect, would they be happier if he suppressed his youthful error and went on pretending he had written a faultless book? Is it wrong to confess mistakes that must surely mislead the trusting? He goes further and produces some fresh contradictions as yet undiscovered by his accuser, invoking an ignorant sinner’s privilege of seeking in all contrition the remission of his typographic sins. In turn he accuses his bigoted disciples of making a religion of asymmetry. The truth is, Tschichold concludes, that both symmetry and asymmetry are useful principles, dependable tools for the use of the practised designer. The alleged ‘renegade’ having thus given his altered views with such patient tact and good humour, the attacks ceased—at least in printed form.
With his departure in 1933 from the Munich Meisterschule and his residence in Basle began Tschichold’s important career as a teacher—a teacher in a classroom without walls, indeed without national frontiers. His widened audience was reached by his published articles and essays on particular aspects of his craft, by books designed for publishers, and by books of his own authorship, along with much commercial and promotional printing done to his specifications. His own published writings now exceed 50 titles, including translations into five languages—all achieved in the 30-odd years since he left the Munich Meisterschule. Indeed, it took this school only 20 years to realise what it had lost; and in 1954 came its invitation to Tschichold to assume the school’s directorship—an invitation he in the end declined. His students round the world have come to look forward to his instructional volumes, their texts and footnotes packed with discriminating comment.
In 1946 the late Oliver Simon of the Curwen Press flew to Basle on behalf of Allen Lane to engage Tschichold as redesigner of the entire family of Penguin Books—a task that in three years’ time brought forth over 600 titles, each newly made to suit the changing needs of the world’s greatest paperback publisher. Tschichold’s precise draft of instructions to govern the Penguin house style still reads like a distillation of wisdom patiently acquired by a versatile practitioner, and he imparted to Penguin titles a new dignity, a family look overlaid with a British reserve hitherto lacking.
The call from Penguin came just after his completion of a series of Birkhäuser Klassiker in Basle, these including a 12-volume Goethe, a 10-volume Shakespeare and five other authors, each quarter-cloth volume virtually given away at 3 Swiss francs. For the same publisher he also designed some oblong quartos on the historic Chinese woodcut, which was a personal passion of his. The originals date back to 1620, when for recurrent ceremonial occasions such as a wedding or a royal progress; sets of them were often reprinted. Within the 1940s came simultaneous German, French and English editions from the Holbein Verlag of Basle of three major selections. The first two were entitled Early Chinese Colour-Prints and The Wood-Cutter Hu Cheng-yen, both being installments from The Ten Bamboo Hall, the most famous collection of its kind; the third, chosen from the next oldest such collection, bears the title Colour-Prints from the Mustard-Seed Garden. Because this art flourishes today in China, a fourth volume was called for, this one a folio entitled Contemporary Chinese Colour-Prints, ten of its 16 specimens being painted and then cut as woodblocks by Chi Pai-shih, who died at 94 only a few years ago. Finally, there is a splendid octavo of Chinese Poetry Paper by the Master of the Ten Bamboo Hall. Each of these, in Chinese double-fold, is produced with the technical, editorial and bibliographical devotion of a true admirer who, perforce reproducing from prints, not from the original blocks, has taken a fanatical care to make all worthy of their originals. In particular, the small volume of poetry paper just has to be seen; there is no describing its tiny river scene, its waters rippled by delicate blind impressions that keep a tiny vessel afloat. Here is a world in miniature, so effortlessly shown as to require no ink for the buoyant water—another instance of the Chinese gift for art without technology.
Typophiles and calligraphiles are indebted to Tschichold for his studies of letter forms. All are models of expository prose: quick in marshalling the historical facts, orderly in criticism, discriminating in their corrective hints, and above all exemplary in their brevity. For they all possess what engineers call ‘terminal facilities’—that is, they stop when the topic is finished. Among these are his Geschichte der Schrift in Bildern (the English edition is entitled Illustrated History of Lettering and Writing) with its ten pages of introductory text, four of descriptive summary, and so plates acutely and critically captioned.
He has also prepared, for laymen seeking cultivation or for plain men of business seeking criteria for their own printing needs, two amusingly instructive books—Was Jedermann wom Buchdruck Wissen Sollte and Erfreuliche Drucksachen durch gute Typographie—which alas are available only in German. In each, the reader is shown specimens of printed work, good and bad, with quick ways of turning the bad into good. The printer comes to recognise in printing a common-sense extension of his experience which will enable him to evaluate much besides printing.
It is now 21 years since the appearance of Schatzkammer der Schreibkunst, published by Birkhäuser in Basle. This oblong quarto has a dozen pages of text and 100 pages of plates, all calligraphic specimens shown in their true size. To carry the story of writing forward into the era of printing, there is the Meisterbuch der Schrift, published by Otto Maier in Ravensburg in 1952. Its 60 pages of text, with apposite illustrations, and especially its 175 annotated plates make this a volume profusely illustrated, as such books must be. It has just been published in New York by Reinhold under the title Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering.
In recent years Tschichold has been typographer and art director for the Hoffmann-LaRoche pharmaceutical firm in Basle. When in 1960 Basle University celebrated its fifth centenary, the company presented to the University Library a copy of the second (1555) edition of Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica in a contemporary binding. (This second edition is preferred to the first (1543) for its improved text and finer typography. Both were printed by Johannes Oporinus in Basle.) In order to share the occasion with their friends around the world, Hoffmann-LaRoche issued a 16-page folio pamphlet containing ten loose single plates and three double plates reproduced in reduction from the book itself. It was printed in separate editions for each of eight languages aggregating 62,000 copies. The pamphlet carries two articles, one by Adolf Seebass on the book’s importance to medicine, the other by Jan Tschichold on its significance in the typography of learned works. He speaks amusingly of a puzzle caused by the engraver who cut positive instead of negative images on his blocks, thus creating lefthanders, contradictory shadows and inverted landscapes. On a special double plate, Tschichold shows a dozen plates in miniature, each laterally flipped to restore the original images and rejoin the landscape’s contours behind them.
As part of his unending concern with techniques and materials of printing, Tschichold produced in 1953, for the Basle paper firm of Kupferschmid, a comparative study to show the response of eight different papers to each of 18 faces from Monotype, Stempel, Bauer and Haas, in the three major classes of printing: letterpress, offset and gravure. In this 36-page quarto in double columns, half width pages alternate with full pages to facilitate comparison of results of the permutations induced in a type by different papers and processes. It is a reference tool of utmost value to the designer, for whom Tschichold has contrived to blend instruction with physical and professional delight.
Tschichold’s strong scribal talent has often produced lettering commissions for publishers and booksellers. He always likes to reproduce other artists’ letters in their best possible state. When, for example, he was working on Alfred Fairbanks Book of Scripts for Penguin in 1949, he took special pains with the cover panels of roman capitals from Juan de Yciar’s Spanish manual of 1547. Because even the early editions were printed from blocks unduly battered, he used his pen and brush to restore the letters to their pristine finish. It is with him an act of simple pietas, and he has done it many times for many a writing master.
He has so far created two typefaces. The first, for the Schelter & Giesecke foundry in 1935, is a slim, graceful, serifless italic originally written with an edged pen and bearing the name of Saskia (famous as the wife of Rembrandt). In its range from 6 to 60 point it is even today a subtle and sinewy letter form that is severely charming or charmingly severe. It is still usable, with no nonsense about it.
In 1960 he began the design of Sabon, in which this article is set. An austere form of Garamond, this typeface is the first to be conceived for simultaneous issue as foundry type by Stempel and as matrices for composition on ‘Monotype’ and ‘Linotype’ machines. This meant a triple headache for the designer, since he had to devise subtle compensations for the three different sets of body widths in order for the face to be consistent in all three forms. But this is the kind of problem he likes, and he is now enjoying his recovery from the triple set of agonies. And well he may, for Sabon’s recent christening as a type for handsetting at the Stempel foundry already stamps it as a decided success. Gotthard de Beauclair has just completed a limited edition at the Trajanus Press in Frankfurt of Joseph Bédier’s established text of Der Roman von Tristan und Isolde in Rudolf G. Binding’s German version, with 14 hand-coloured woodcuts by Fritz Kredel. This tall octavo volume is nothing less than a triple masterpiece jointly achieved by Tschichold as type designer, by Beauclair as typographer and by Kredel as illustrator. Sabon looks like a sharpened Garamond, ingenious in its fit, balance and texture, altogether a happy augury for this Trismegistus among current type designs.
For Tschichold’s friends, the end of each year is a time of surprises—surprises of printed matter dealing with printing origins, survivals or revivals. For example, there is the large early Chinese portrait of Ts’ai Lun, credited with the invention of papermaking; there is an illustrated essay on the techniques of the early Chinese and Japanese colour woodblock; some early Chinese stone rubbings; a picture in lace-maker’s technique of the nineteenth century. This last, being part of his private collection, is now, with its seven companions, the means for illustrating a book of German baroque and rococo love poems, Schönste, Liebe Mich, published to his design by Lamhert Schneider of Heidelberg.
The latest of these occasionalia, his greeting for 1966, is from a unique document he discovered: a print of the earliest poster for an established tradesman, originally cut in metal or wood about 1560—that is, 155 years earlier than any poster hitherto known in Europe. It was issued by the Paris milliner and hosier, Pierre Baudeau, from his shop in the Rue St Denis. In that period silk stockings, which had hitherto been worn only at court, were gradually becoming fashionable.
Some day, one supposes, Tschichold’s collection of colour-printed fruit wrappers of the Mediterranean region will become first an illustrated monograph and later a modest book on a fascinating subject. It will also be a surprise. Only the traveller who has seen, and saved, such wrappers can imagine an art form undreamed-of by fruit ranchers in Florida, Texas or California.
I began by saying that recognition, honour and acclaim have by now come to Jan Tschichold. I consider it an honour for my country, the United States of America, to have been the first in such recognition, when in 1954 the American Institute of Graphic Arts awarded him its gold medal—the first such award to a Continental European. He is an honorary member of the Double Crown Club of London and of the Société typographique de France. When in 1965 the city of Leipzig celebrated its 500th birthday it awarded him its Gutenberg Prize, the highest European award for typography. In June 1965 the Royal Society of Arts in London conferred on him the distinction of Honorary Royal Designer for Industry ‘for outstanding contributions as a typographer and book designer’, making him the first Swiss artist to receive this award.
When in May 1966 he addressed the International Week of Typography at the Gutenherg Museum in Mainz, he confined himself to what he called the three requirements of bookmaking: I) indention for each paragraph save the first; 2) avoidance of formats large or ungainly in size, and of square formats generally; 3) avoidance of white or glossy-white papers wherever possible. These all seem modest enough. Even if we add his permissive symmetric and asymmetric typography, it is hard to understand why such simple rules should have been criticised as doctrinaire or even dictatorial. Perhaps his critics feel reproached by the common sense of his teachings and so have come to regret their own gullibility in having plumped, in their own practice, for so much typography-à-la-mode. They can neither forgive him his quick renouncing of his youthful errors nor come to a like renunciation of their own. He continues to demand of the typographer only a single obligation: so to organise a hook as to make its reading easy and pleasant. ‘Grace in typography’, he is convinced, ‘comes of itself when the compositor brings a certain love to his work. Whoever does not love his work cannot hope that it will please others.’ Is this a dictator uttering some doctrinaire gospel? No, it sounds rather like the man whose work I have long admired for its rational care and for its clean, uncluttered design. Recalling that reading is the one remaining pleasure that must be enjoyed in silence, I can salute Jan Tschichold as a designer alert to every method or material that promises to deepen that pleasure. As such, he remains for me a conserver of those practices of the ‘art preservative’ that have survived mere experiment.
Paul Standard
This article is culled from a keepsake for a lecture given at Gallery 303 in New York on 7 December 1966.