Jan Tschichold on typefaces

“Personally I am sick and tired of making typefaces. Essentially, in my opinion, it is not a task of typography. I have done two others apart from Transito, but only to earn money, and at that time I really had to do it. I find new typefaces fundamentally and absolutely superfluous. In the best cases, new typefaces have a momentary effect, and that is really quite minimal. What we make should be lasting, but: primum vivere…

The production of new types is only a ‘necessity’ within capitalism. Where advertising is transformed into scientific communication (in socialism) the typeface nonsense is pointless.”

— Jan Tschichold (letter to Josef Albers, 1931)