The New Typography vs Swiss
ニュー・タイポグラフィ / スイス・スタイル
Asymmetric composition, sans serif with photography, and functional white space make the two look built the same way.
How to tell them apart. Every element riding a strict grid with objective photography means Swiss. Elements placed one by one with no grid showing means The New Typography.
The New Typography
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Turned printed matter into rational information structure through asymmetry, sans-serifs, photography and functional hierarchy.
Swiss
Puts order front and center and makes the information itself the protagonist.
| The New Typography | Swiss | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1920s–1930s | 1950s– |
| Family | Experimental Typography | Functionalism |
| Kind | Layout | Style |
| Cues | Asymmetry / Sans-serif type / Photography / Functional white space | Strict grid / Sans-serif type / Asymmetry / Objective photography |
| Best used for | Rebuilding letterheads and forms so they read in order without ornament · Fixing the hierarchy of headline, text and picture in a single decision | Making complex information fast to read · Giving an organization rationality and transparency |
| Type | One sans in two weights, with hierarchy carried by size alone | Neutral sans-serif; be bold with size contrast |
| Composition | Drop centering, set a left axis, divide areas with rules and space | 12-column grid, left-aligned, asymmetric |
| Material | Black and red, halftone photography, plain rules, no ornament | White space and objective photographs; almost no ornament |
| Caution | When asymmetry becomes the aim in itself the reading order is never settled, and the page ends up harder to read than the ornamented one it replaced. | Too much tidiness turns anonymous. Keep one strong jump in scale. |