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The First Of Joseph Stalin 's Five Year Plans

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In 1928, the first of Joseph Stalin’s Five Year Plans, a series of nation-wide centralized economic plans for the Soviet Union, imposed communal farming on its citizens, Herbert Hoover, running on a platform of continued peace and prosperity, was elected 31st President of the United States, (“News and Events of 1928”) and Jan Tschichold, a bold, self-confident, young, typographer from Germany, published Die Neue Typographie (The New Typography), a radical new view of type and design. At first glance, the release of Tschichold’s book may not appear to carry the same significance to the world stage as Stalin’s and Hoover’s policies. While this may be true, The New Typography had a profound impact on the world of design, influencing…show more content…
Always a strong proponent of functional design, Tschichold looked at design with a utilitarian point of view. According to Tschichold, functional designs show a greater understanding of typography’s role: communication (Eskilson 233). In order to achieve clarity in communication, Tschichold was convinced that type should follow a logical flow on the page, predetermined by content; form follows function. Tschichold wrote, “Every part of a text relates to every other part by a definite, logical relationship of emphasis and value, predetermined by content. It is up to the typographer to express this relationship clearly and visibly, through type sizes and weight, arrangement of lines, use of colour, photography, etc.”(67) By 1928, and the release of The New Typography, Tschichold was a staunch promoter for the exclusive use of sans serif type and asymmetrical layouts, believing these the most efficient way to achieve clarity of information. “His work… was functional, aesthetically satisfying, and designed for reproduction by machine-type composition and newer printing technologies” (“Jan Tschichold…”). Later in life, Tschichold abandoned his views on the exclusive use of sans serif fonts and asymmetrical layouts, realizing that in certain circumstances, symmetrical layouts and traditional serif fonts were more appropriate and more functional,
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