In Honor of the 100th birthday of Jan Tschichold

In the summer of 1945, the famous English book printer Oliver Simon and the Penguin Books publisher Allan Lane came to Basel to convince Tschichold to join the publishing house as typographer. Tschichold was delighted to accept the offer but it was another year before he could move to London. He began to rework the typographic form of Penguin books in 1946, a massive task encompassing the complete overhaul of the books’ typography. Tschichold instated strict typesetting rules to raise the formal level of the printing and published “In the Service of the Book” to detail these guidelines.

In the few years spent working in London, Tschichold gained much respect and was named an honorary member of the London Double Crown Club, a selective group of English typographers and printers.