Jan Tschichold

   Most people would say that Jan Tschichold was one of the major influences to 20th century typography. He was known as a book designer, teacher, and much more. Jan began his life in typography when his father who was a sign writer, introduced him to calligraphy. Having calligraphic training so early in life set Jan apart from others typographers at the time. Sadly his parents shot down his dream of becoming an artist and encouraged him to become an illustration teacher instead. He only taught for about 3 years until he decided to pursue calligraphy studies instead. He studied a wide range of creative practices, which he was already very good at without studying. When he began to stand out from the rest in school, his teachers took noticed and offered him a position to teach his first script class. 

   As the years went on Jan became interested in all types of fonts and started collecting fonts done by others as inspiration. The years to follow Jan pushed the envelope by designing new creative ways to layout text and images on a page. In 1928 one of his most successful works was published, it is called The New Typography. It was a book of modern graphic design layout and was used for years to come. The Nazis disapproval of Tschicholds work later pushed him to leave Germany and move his family to Switzerland. He did a lot of great work in switzerland before moving to London in 1946 with a job offer to work for Allen Lane of Penguin Books. He worked with Penguin for years helping redesign the covers of books and doing a lot of great work for them. He returned to Switzerland later to continue his works with fonts and developed his own font called Sabon. 

   Jan Tschicold did many great things in his lifetime. He helped pave the way for sans serif fonts to become popular and helped modernize clean design layouts and strengthened the design of penguin books. This amazing man will go down in history for his influential work.