Team'77: Erich Gschwind, André Gürtler, Christian Mengelt

Team'77

André Gürtler and Chris­t­ian Men­gelt founded the Let­ter­form Re­search & De­sign Team in 1974 and Team'77, Let­ter­form Re­search & De­sign to­gether with Erich Gschwind in 1977, as an in­de­pen­dent part­ner­ship for type­face de­sign pro­jects. Team'77 has pro­duced the fol­low­ing print­ing fonts with and on be­half of the fol­low­ing com­pa­nies: Cyril­lic Gothic (1974) and Alpin Gothic (1974) for Com­pu­graphic Cor­po­ra­tion (USA); Media (1976) and Signa (1978) for Bobst Graphic (Lau­sanne) and Au­to­logic (USA); and Avant Garde Gothic, Oblique (1977) for ITC, In­ter­na­tional Type­face Cor­po­ra­tion (USA). In 1980, Team'77 de­vel­oped the leg­endary Haas Unica font for the Haas Type Foundry in München­stein.

André Gürtler, 1936

Typographer, type designer and lecturer, Therwil

After train­ing as a com­pos­i­tor, André Gürtler stud­ied ty­po­graphic de­sign at the Basel School of De­sign under Emil Ruder. There­after he worked at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing the Mono­type Cor­po­ra­tion in Sal­fords, Eng­land and Ate­lier Adrian Frutiger in Paris. From 1965 to 2000 he taught type de­sign at the Basel School of De­sign. He has been a guest lec­turer at var­i­ous de­sign schools and uni­ver­si­ties in Eu­rope, the US and Mex­ico. He is the au­thor of nu­mer­ous pub­li­ca­tions in var­i­ous spe­cial­ist jour­nals and has been a mem­ber of ed­i­to­r­ial staff at the jour­nal Ty­pografis­che Monatsblätter.

Christian Mengelt, 1938

Graphic designer, type designer and lecturer, Blauen

Chris­t­ian Men­gelt stud­ied as a sign painter and then as a graphic de­signer at the Basel School of De­sign under Armin Hof­mann. After set­ting up his own stu­dio in Basel he em­barked on col­lab­o­ra­tions with var­i­ous de­sign and ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies, in­clud­ing GGK (Basel) and Mendel & Oberer in Mu­nich. From 1972 to 2001 he taught type de­sign at the Basel School of De­sign. He has been a guest lec­turer at var­i­ous de­sign schools and uni­ver­si­ties in Eu­rope, the US and Mex­ico, and is the au­thor of nu­mer­ous pub­li­ca­tions in spe­cial­ist jour­nals.

Erich Gschwind, 1947

Typographer and type designer, Metzerlen

Erich Gschwind trained as a com­pos­i­tor and then as a ty­po­graphic de­signer in the spe­cial­ist book print­ing and ty­pog­ra­phy courses at the Basel School of De­sign, also under Emil Ruder. There­after, he worked as a ty­po­graphic de­signer in var­i­ous print­ing houses and was re­spon­si­ble for cor­po­rate de­sign at the med­ical sci­ence pub­lisher S. Karger AG in Basel, for which he de­signed nu­mer­ous sci­en­tific pub­li­ca­tions.