In 1923, typographer and book designer Jan Tschichold visited the first Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar; he was highly impressed by the exhibition which, as he wrote himself, gave a completely new direction to his creative development. He met Bauhaus designers, architects and painters such as Walter Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Oskar Schlemmer and Vassily Kandinsky and also came into contact with Russian Constructivists El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko. He began to apply experimental ideas to his own design work and conducted extensive correspondence with noted artists of his era.

It was in this environment that Elementare Typographie (Elementary Typography) appeared in 1925, as a supplement of Typographische Mitteilungen (Typographic Notes), the journal of the Educational Association of German Book Printers in Leipzig. The supplement was edited and laid out by Jan Tschichold, and it was here that he sketched out his principles for a new functional book design. The journal created a great impression among trade professionals, and Tschichold’s theories were both avidly celebrated and vigorously contested.