The New Typography
After Tschichold saw the 1923 exibition of Bauhaus at Weimar, he joined the modenist design movement. Tschichold rejected traditional typefaces and symmetrical composition to embrace sans-serif and geometric design. Jan was strongly influenced by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky whose works displayed balance and conflict through contrasting forms. He believed that the cure for typography lay in abandoning rules, adopting symmetrical setting and the exclusive use of sans serif typefaces.His book, Die neue Typographie appeared in 1928. It explains the principles and functional uses of modernist typography to printers and designers and became the bible of every young typesetter.
In 1927 and 1928, Tschichold made a large series of posters for the films of the Phoebus Palace, a cinema in Munich. However, his posters and ideas were scorned in some circles and the growing Nazi movement endangered further use of typography