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The first seven students
came from the United
States, Canada, England,
and Switzerland, expecting
to study with the masters
Hofmann and Ruder.
When I showed up as the
typography teacher, their
shock was obvious. Because
of my training and radical
experiments, and because we
were around the same age, the
students began to trust me.
Eventually, disappointment
gave way to curiosity.
The teachers agreed on
common themes for the initial
two years of the advanced
program, the symbol and
the package. Feeling more
confident by the second year,
bolstered by the students’
enthusiasm, I risked further
experimentation, and my
classes became a laboratory
to test and expand models for
a new typography.
Accelerated by the social
unrest of our generation,
the force behind Swiss
typography and its
philosophy of reduction was
losing its international hold.
My students were inspired,
we were on to something
different, and we knew it.