Jan Tschichold - born 2nd April 1902, Leipzig Germany.
He learnt the sign making trade from his father at an early age. He became a teacher of illustration and after a few years gave it up to pursue his interest in calligraphy. This is where he differs from most designers of the time who generally had architectural and the fine arts backgrounds.
He became very strict on design rules after visiting the Bauhaus, now incorporating rigorous structure, composition, white space and straight lines within his layouts.
He took on the use of Sans serif fonts and set about making layouts different to others of the time. This was before the introduction of the Swiss style. His layouts often have type off axis and are not symmetrical, though balanced.
He helped re-designed 500 penguin books and formed new rules to be followed in the design of their covers.
