Decoding Swiss Style: Letterform Features

This repository contains the curated historical dataset developed for Decoding Swiss Style, a research project conducted as part of the DH-412: History and the Digital course at EPFL. This project bridges traditional graphic design history and computational analysis to track the evolution of twentieth-century visual culture across Switzerland, Germany, and France. The dataset provides structured typographic and metadata characterizations of 148,037 individual letterform observations extracted from historical printed artifacts spanning the years 1900 to 1999. The observations are calculated from images originating in public archives: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / Archiv Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK): Providing extensive records of applied twentieth-century Swiss typography and visual communication. Swiss Poster Museum Archive: Predominantly capturing graphic designs created and distributed within Switzerland. Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Featuring early twentieth-century German and French poster prints documenting critical shifts in regional advertising design. Posteritati Movie Poster Gallery: Comprising distinct cinematographic and film advertising posters from France, Germany, and Switzerland. Letterform Archive: Providing historical type specimens, primarily documenting late-nineteenth and twentieth-century German typographic foundries. Production Type Magazine: Documenting historical French type specimen sheets and editorial layout features. Typografische Monatsblätter Research Archive / Design Reviewed: Capturing covers and layout specimens from the influential Swiss typographic periodical (Typografische Monatsblätter), supplemented by high-resolution design review archives tracking mid-century International Typographic Style (Swiss Style) trajectories. La Revue suisse de l'Imprimerie (RSI): The covers are scanned by our team at the Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne. RSI is a periodic issue similar to Typografische Monatsblätter (TM), which had been published in French-speaking Switzerland and then acquired by TM. The authors would like to thank Professor Jérôme Baudry and Joël Swai Praz (EPFL Laboratory for the History of Science and Technology) for the advice and methodological suggestions.