Swiss Style

Also called the International Typographic Style. Developed in Zurich and Basel during the 1950s, out of the design programs at the Zurich University of the Arts and the Basel School of Design. The grid came first. Sans-serif type and objective photography followed from that same logic. Josef Muller-Brockmann wrote extensively on the subject and argued a well-built grid removed ambiguity from a design entirely.

Helvetica came out of this period, released in 1957 under the name Neue Haas Grotesk, designed by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann. The goal was neutrality, letterforms with little personality of their own, letting the message carry the weight. Corporations picked it up fast through the 1960s. Grid-based layout is still standard in editorial and web design largely because of this decade.