Jan Tschichold

Jan Tschichold was born in 1902 in Leipzig, Germany. Following in his father's footsteps, he learned sign lettering at a very young age, later going on to become a renowned designer and typographer. His typographic interests landed him a job as a calligraphy teacher in 1921, though he had little training in the art he was seen as a sort of prodigy. Upon attending the Bauhaus exhibition in 1924, his passion immediately changed and "as though overnight" he started designing rigid, sans-serif, layouts with large amounts of negative space. This shocked and intriqued people at the time, for the modernist movement in typography wouldn't begin for another 20 years! Putting these new principles into action, he published a book called "The New Typography" in 1928. By the early 1930's Hitler had come to power in Germany and deemed Tschichold's typography as a threat, temporarily imprisoning him. Fortunately, he was able to escape to Switzerland where he lived out the remainder of his life. By 1935, he had published another book called "Typographic Design" and by the end of the 1930's he began to let go of the rigid Bauhaus principles he had been mastering for over a decade. His later works reflected a looser, free, and more creative design. In 1946, he was offered a job in London to redesign Penguin Books, where he stayed for 3 years. Upon returning to Switzerland he released two more books, "Arbitrary Measurement Relations of the book page"(1962), and "Master Book of Typefaces". His last and possibly greatest achievement was releasing his typeface Sabon after many years of development. It is now one of the respected classic typefaces. His reign as a teacher, typographic prodigy, and designer came to an end in 1974.

-http://retinart.net/artist-profiles/jan-tschichold/