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Jan Tschichold was born on April, 1902, in Leipzig Germany.  Tschichold was the son of a sign painter and was exposed to the world of calligraphy from a young age.  He studied calligraphy and design at the Leipzig Academy of Graphic Arts from 1919 to 1921.  After school, he began freelancing as a lettering artist and designer.  During the Bauhaus exhibition at Weiman in 1923, Tschichold was introduced to modernist design.  The movement resonated with him and he joined its ranks soon after.  He rejected traditional fonts and symmetrical composition, instead embracing sans-serif typefaces, geometric construction, and asymmetric composition.

Tschichold's work combined rationalism, fuctionality, and aesthetics.  He moved to the cutting edge of modern design when his book Die neue Typographie explained the principles and uses of Modernist typography to printers, type compositors, and designers.  Tschichold's writings helped to spread Modernist graphic design to the world.  In 1933 the Nazi's arrested Tschichold for his work because he disagreed with traditional German graphic design.  Tschichold fled to Switzerland where he worked as a book designer.

Tschichold continued working as a designer and typographer for many years.  His work shaped the world of graphic design and typography as we know it today.  Notable examples of his work include the Sabon typeface and his large volume of work for Penguin Books.  Tschichold died on August 11, 1974