Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography: Its Roots and Impact on National Scene

Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography is a critical essay and an operative handbook that paved the way to modern graphic design. It is a game-changing book that still attracts the interest and curiosity of design historians and practitioners after almost a century since its publication in 1928. Yet, The New Typography is a victim of its own success: it enjoys the benefits of canonisation, while suffering some side effects. Having reached an almost mythical status, The New Typography is often taken for granted and rarely questioned or closely scrutinized. This paradox was the starting point of the research project “The Sources of Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography” (http://die-neue-bibliographie.ch/). Conducted at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO) and supported by the Strategic fund of HES-SO, the project reconstructed, collected and contextualized the body of bibliographical sources included in The New Typography. Conducted at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO) and supported by the Strategic fund of HES-SO, the project reconstructed, collected and contextualized the body of bibliographical sources included in The New Typography.

The conference “Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography: Its Roots and Impact on National Scenes” aims to provide a better understanding of the larger cultural context of Tschichold’s book and the typographicmovement that stemmed from it. International scholars in the fields of art and design history and print culture explore the roots and impact of The New Typography in different national and local scenes, as well as timeframes: from Italy and Belgium to Japan and Colonial India, from London to New York, from the 1920s to the 1980s. The conference opens with keynote lectures by Dr Christopher Burke, Principal Research Fellow at University of Reading, Dr Julia Meer, Curator of the poster and graphics collection, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, and by Dr Paul Stirton, Professor emeritus at Bard Graduate Center, New York. It closes with the vernissage of the exhibition Unpacking Tschichold’s Library that gives visitors a change to flick through the bibliographical sources of The New Typography.

The conference is realized with the support of ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO). It is funded by the SNSF – Swiss National Science Foundation and supported by the SDN – Swiss Design Network.