wiedler.ch

book (design) story #121

werner schmalenbach:
die kunst afrikas

holbein-verlag, basel, 1953
size: ?? x ?? cm
designer: jan tschichold

this book by art historian werner schmalenbach (*1920) focuses on native african art which influenced so many european modern artists of the early 20th century.

jan tschichold (1902-1974) had been a pioneer of the "new typography" movement that propagated an asymmetric page/title layout (see stories 29, 30, 31). by the late 1930s tschichold developed into a neo-traditionalist typography with axial page/title layout (see story 50) – for which he was attacked by max bill in the mid 1940s. interestingly, tschichold used an asymmetric title layout for this 1953 book.

while the cover and jacket sport a sans-serif (gill), a garamond-style typeface is used inside the book.

the positioning of the pictures is sometimes rather unusual – but a master like tschichold knew what he was doing ...