After Jan Tschichold manifesto “elementare typographie” (elemental typography) had been published as a special issue of the trade union’s magazine “typographische mitteilungen” in 1925, jan tschichold (1902-1974) wrote this comprehensive book that adressed ideological and practical issues of the “new typography” movement.
this book is much more ideologically charged than tschichold’s later publications. his enthusiasm for sans-serif (and roman, to a certain degree) goes as far as to denounce all other typefaces and alphabets as “nationalism”– not only blackletter, but also “greek, cyrillic (=russian and bulgarian), turkish (=arabic), chinese (=japanese), indian and other exotic scripts (zulus, papuas, etc.)”! soon tschichold would revise this extremely euro-centric position and endorse a “good mix” of typefaces, and he actually turned into a great admirer of far eastern printing culture.
Die Neue Typographie by Jan Tschichold has been recognized as the definitive treatise on book and graphic design in the machine age. First published in English in 1995, with an excellent introduction by Robin Kinross, this new edition includes a foreword by Rich Hendel, who considers current thinking about Tschichold’s life and work.