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It was praised in the English magazine “The Architectural Review” in 1940: “Swiss typography is always good.” The subject of this praise was the rational typography of the “Zürich School” that Max Bill, Ernst Keller, Richard Paul Lohse and Haus Neuburg belonged to at that time. In the years that followed, younger graphic designers from Zürich and Basel came along and contributed further to the modern ideas of the school. The works produced here were so original that England and America began referring to the “Swiss style.”

Rosemary Tissi, graphic artist from Zürich, was born in 1937. In order to establish how she fits into the rational Swiss style and understand her influence, it is useful to briefly recall the status of graphic art in Switzerland around 1960. Tissi completed her graphic design studies in Zürich in 1958 at the height of Swiss style’s international acclaim. This great acclaim was enhanced considerably by exhibitions and publications by Swiss designers. One such exhibition took place in 1955 in Zürich at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, providing an overall view of the status of graphic art in Switzerland at the time. The journal “Werk” devoted an entire issue (11/1995) to this exhibition. The issue featured exemplary works by the well-known Swiss designers Karl Gerstner, Armin Hofmann, Siegfried Odermatt and Carlo Vivarelli. Rosemary Tissi later confessed that as a budding designer at the time, the works of the senior contemporaries illustrated in this issue fascinated her.

Josef Müller-Brockmann presented an exhibition of constructive graphics in 1958 at the Zürich Kunsgewerbemuseum featuring works by Lohse, Neuburg, and Vivarelli. In the same year these four designers founded the international journal “Neue Grafik”—New Graphic Design. In 1959, Karl Gerstner and Markus Kutter published their book “Die neue Graphik”—The New Graphic Art. Another account explains how Josef Müller-Brockmann introduced the subject of commercial art to his students at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich during his time there between 1957 and 1960. He tried to educate his young pupils in discipline with steady guidance, steering clear of disturbing influences and using strict basic exercises. He strove for a puritanical creative environment by suppressing any emotionality. Steady, strict, disciplined, and puritanical are words that characterize the constructive graphics of that period in Switzerland very aptly.

Everyone in Zürich opting for a career in the field of commercial art at that time was influenced in some way by this puritanical creative environment. However, there were designers such as Rosmarie Tissi who did not wish to simply imitate the already widely established Swiss style. These designers began to experiment, but did not dismiss all of the accomplishments of "strict" graphics. The works of Rosmarie Tissi show how she breathed new life into constructive graphics. All of her work displays the great enjoyment of playful interaction between composition, color and typography. The un-dogmatic way in which Rosmarie Tissi designs certainly shows a considerable divergence from the puritanical Swiss style. For her, typography is not just a medium to convey messages linguistically. Rather, her typography possesses pictorial qualities that offer additional support to linguistic messages.

Visualizing Music
Tissi’s poster layout for the Zürich concert series “Serenades” is based on the bright and cheerful sound that characterizes a serenade. This series is performed in the evening open air; this is also reflected in the layout. The white typography on a blue background in the "Serenades 93" poster is symbolic of the pale light of the moon. The “Serenades 96” poster visually expresses the bright and cheerful music of a serenade with an abstract composition in the style of Kandinsky. The Russian painter is well known for the fact that he considered his art a visual expression of music. The neck of a violin depicted on the poster for the “Lucerne International Music Festival 1994” immediately conveys the appropriate message. Moreover, here Rosmarie Tissi portrays the crescendo of the orchestra with a geometric composition in primary colors rising in steps from bottom left to top right.

Typographic Montage
One quality of experimental typography is that it adapts to modern art. This has already been seen in Futurism, Dadaism and Constructivism. The avant-garde of the art world has always released letters from their conventional task of conveying linguistic information. From that time on, letters could be turned upside-down and converted into pictures. The 1986 advert for “tips”, a Belgian advertising journal, is an example of such a montage of letters. The graphic artist produced another montage for a book and offset printing house in Zürich. In 1980 this printing house announced that from then on it could offer photocomposition in numerous typefaces. Rosmarie Tissi demonstrates the capabilities of this printing house with its new photocomposition by means of a montage. It consists of positively and negatively set fonts in various sizes and types. In addition to this she uses various halftones and colors — truly the entire repertoire of a large printing works.

On both of her posters for the "Swiss Posters" exhibitions of 1996 and 1999, montage is also used as a predominant idea. A poster is known to be a rectangular conveyor of information and made of paper, which from time to time gets covered by a new poster. Rosmarie Tissi expresses this fact graphically. She uses typography and color to portray the constantly changing posters, creating two rectangles lying one on top of the other.

When Tissi created a face for a wristwatch, she interpreted her unique idea using typographic montage. In place of the usual figures depicting twelve hours around the watch face, she used ten letters spelling out "Happy Hours" . She then only needed two figures to complete the hours in a day, the figure 12 on top and the 6 at the bottom. Typography can be so simple and yet so refined.

Logos and Letterheads
Rosmarie Tissi's active interest in the expressive potential of typefaces manifests itself in a large number of logos and letterheads. For example, her letterhead for the gallery "art· garage" transforms the letter “g” so much that it becomes four circles resembling the wheels of a car. Therefore, the typography itself creates the association with the garage. In practically all of her works, Rosmarie Tissi’s interest in one color’s effects on the intensity of another is evident. In the "art· garage" letterhead, it is the limited use of black, which brings light blue to the fore.