Autumn 2019

The advocacy of Tschichold

Jan Tschichold and the New Typography: Graphic Design Between the World Wars

Exhibition: Bard Graduate Center, New York. Curated by Paul Stirton. 14 February – 7 July 2019. Catalogue by Paul Stirton. Design by Jocelyn Lau with art direction by Kate DeWitt. Yale University Press, £25, $35

As Paul Stirton, the curator of ‘Jan Tschichold and the New Typography’ readily admits, his exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center is not primarily a presentation of the work of designer Jan Tschichold (1902–74). Instead, works by colleagues of Tschichold’s outnumber examples by Tschichold, which are shown in a single small room. The examples of Tschichold’s work, which include calligraphy and book designs that pre- and post-date his most intense period of Modernist zeal, prove his talent and reveal the range of his activities beyond promotion of the revolution in graphic design known as the New Typography. Like the exhibition, the catalogue, also by Stirton, is not a catalogue raisonné of Tschichold’s design, but rather an examination of New Typography through the lens of Tschichold’s life.

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Cover of Jan Tschichold and the New Typography.
Top. Spread showing a 1927 Tschichold poster for the Phoebus Palast cinema in Munich, Germany.

Cover of Jan Tschichold and the New Typography. Design by Jocelyn Lau with art direction by Kate DeWitt.

Doug Clouse designer and partner in The Graphics Office, New York

Read the full version in Eye no. 99 vol. 25, 2019

EYE99

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.