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book (design) story #122

trudy egender-wintsch:
kleine reise ins elsass

dr. hans girsberger, zürich, 1937
printer: effingerhof, brugg
size: 21 x 15 cm
designer: max bill

trudy egender-wintsch (1902-1985) was an artist who had studied with hans arp and founded graphica, an association of women artists. she was the wife of karl egender, an architect who had built early modern buildings like the schule und museum für gestaltung in zürich (1930-1933). this booklet is a travel report about the alsace, an area the egenders must have known well since karl egender was alsatian-born.

the author also contributed drawings which are printed in different colours.

the (uncredited) book designer is max bill (1908-1994). bodoni was a typeface that he often used. the page layout employs lots of white space around justified paragraphs, with no indents and no page numbers.

what seems quite surprising for bill is the symmetrically centred layout of the title page. ironically, a couple of years later max bill would accuse jan tschichold for propagating "traditional", symmetrical layouts (also see story 121).