October 3rd, 2009 — Thought

Layout Study

As an homage to the beauty of the famous cover of Jan Tschichold’s manusc­ript — Die Neue Typo­graphie, and in an effort to learn more about this noted cru­sa­der of moder­nism, I did a bit of research on the author and com­pi­led a brief his­tory into a graphi­cal study of his work. I really enjo­yed the pro­cess and the things I lear­ned in doing so.

A Brief Introduction

Jan Tschichold is noted in the his­tory of my pro­fes­sion as being one of the pio­neers of modern layout and typo­graphy. He became a lea­ding advo­cate of Moder­nist design with his most noted work Die Neue Typo­graphie. This book was a mani­festo of modern design, in which he con­dem­ned all fonts but sans-serif. He also favo­red non-centered design (e.g., on title pages), and codi­fied many other Moder­nist design rules. He advo­ca­ted the use of stan­dar­di­zed paper sizes for all prin­ted mat­ter, and made some of the first clear expla­na­tions of the effec­tive use of dif­fe­rent sizes and weights of type in order to quickly and easily con­vey infor­ma­tion. I wan­ted to learn more about this man, and also take a clo­ser look at what made his work so effective.

First Steps

I deci­ded that to learn more about Tschichold I would first gather resour­ces and gene­ral infor­ma­tion about his life. (One of my favo­rite refe­ren­ces which, sadly, did not make it into my piece, was from Jason Santa Maria’s Blog. An entry tit­led Change Of Heart.) I then loo­ked clo­ser at his most famous work; Die Neue Typo­graphie. I deci­ded as a study of that work, I would place my research in a layout mode­led after his grid.

Dis­co­ve­ring The Nuances

I have not con­fir­med it by any relia­ble source, but I have jud­ged the type­face to be Akzidenz-Grotesk. A popu­lar type­face in Tschichold’s day, and one sure to be found in his prin­ters case of fonts. I also Loo­ked Clo­sely at the grid used — star­ting with the A4 paper size, of which Tschichold him­self was a cham­pion of because of the stan­dard paper sizes adhe­rence to the rule of the gol­den sec­tion. There are ele­ments that adhere to both the obvious asym­me­tri­cal grid, and the less pro­noun­ced underl­ying sym­me­tri­cal two-column grid. That he used two grids in one piece really blows my mind.

Com­ple­ting The Study

After com­po­sing a simi­lar grid, selec­ting the type­face, and set­ting the copy that I had gathe­red and orga­ni­zed pre­viously, I noti­ced a few par­ti­cu­lar details that really brought the design into a func­tio­nal har­mony for me. I noti­ced the very strong, almost irre­sis­ti­ble flow of infor­ma­tion. The heavy rule in the top right brings the eye into the page as easily as it leads the to head­line of the page, then on to the ver­ti­cal rule about three quar­ters down, which allows the eye to explore that area before it is pulled by the com­mon asso­cia­tion of the rules weight to the top, where you first ente­red the page. I noti­ced also the space-relationships and the rule of repe­ti­tion that was used to call atten­tion to auxi­liary information.

Conc­lu­sion

I really enjo­yed this exer­cise and feel that I got a lot out of it, both as a study of design exe­cu­tion, and as a study of his­to­ri­cal value. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the com­ments below. Does this type of study excite or bore you? Are there other great designs that you feel one could bene­fit from dis­sec­ting in this manner?

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