Editing Jan Tschichold (section)

==Life==
[[File:TypoGestaltung.jpg|right|thumb|Title page for ''Typographische Gestaltung'', written and designed by Jan Tschichold using [[City (typeface)|City Medium]] and [[Bodoni]]. Published in 1932 by the Benno Schwabe & Co. publishing house.]]

Tschichold was the son of a provincial [[signwriter]], and he was trained in [[calligraphy]]. In 1919, he began in the class of [[Hermann Delitzsch]] a study on the Leipziger Akademie der Künste (Leipzig Academy of the Arts). Due to his extraordinary achievements, he soon became a master pupil of the rector of [[Walter Tiemann]], a type designer with the [[Gebr. Klingspor|Gebr.-Klingspor foundry]], and was given the task of teaching his fellow students. At the same time, he received the first orders as part of the [[Leipzig Trade Fair]] and in 1923 set up his own business as a typographic consultant to a print shop. 

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 art]]s. It also may help explain why he never worked with handmade papers and custom typefaces as many typographers did, preferring instead to use stock faces on a careful choice from commercial paper stocks.

Although, up to this moment, he had only worked with historical and traditional typography, he radically changed his approach after his first visit to the [[Bauhaus]] exhibition at [[Weimar]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cbr5BIlysOMC&q=jan+tschichold|title=Jan Tschichold: A Life in Typography|last=McLean|first=Ruari|publisher=Princeton Architectural Press|year=1997|isbn=9781568980843|pages=7–8|language=en}}</ref> After being introduced to important artists such as [[László Moholy-Nagy]], [[El Lissitzky]], [[Kurt Schwitters]] and others who were carrying out radical experiments to break the rigid schemes of conventional typography. He became sympathetic to this attempt to find new ways of expression and to reach a much more experimental way of working, but at the same time, felt it was important to find a simple and practical approach. 

He became one of the most important representatives of the "new typography"<ref>{{cite book|title=Design of the 20th Century|first1=Charlotte|last1=Fiell|first2=Peter|last2=Fiell|publisher=Taschen|location=Köln|edition=25th anniversary|year=2005|page=695|isbn=9783822840788|oclc=809539744}}</ref> and in a special issue of ''Typographischen Mitteilungen'' (typographic communications) in 1925 with the title of "Elementare Typografie" (elementary typography), he summarized the new approaches in the form of theses.

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]]. Soon after Tschichold had taken up a teaching post in Munich at the behest of [[Paul Renner]], they were both 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 Union|Soviet]] posters were found in his flat, casting him under suspicion of collaboration with communists. 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 two longer stays in England in 1937 (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]]), Tschichold lived in Switzerland for the rest of his life. He died in the hospital at Locarno in 1974.<ref>Jan Tschichold—Posters of the AvantGarde written by Martijn F. Le Coultre and Alston W. Purvis page 21</ref>