Readymag Stories: Rosmarie Tissi

new heritage

Rosmarie Tissi’s style has been evolving throughout her career: from pure functionality of the grid-based Modernist design to a very individualistic aesthetic with vivid colors, peculiar proportions and experimental layouts. Way too abstract for the “Swiss style”, her works also were too Swiss to be mistaken for something else — that trait Tissi shared with Wolfgang Weingart.

Proposal for new Swiss Banknotes. Sfr 50 Sophie Tauber-Arp, 1990–91.
© Rosmarie Tissi, Zurich.

A poster for TIPS magazine. White letters T, I, P and a black letter S on a blue background

Advertisements for „TIPS“, a Belgian magazine on advertising, 1968.
© Rosmarie Tissi, Zurich.

A poster for Serenaden 93. White and black clouds with the sun on a blue background

Poster for „Serenaden 93“. © Rosmarie Tissi, Zurich.

more inventive, more imaginative, and above all, more subtle. —wolfgang weingart

Rosmarie Tissi in her studio, 1958. Photo Sigi Odermatt.

life-long partnerships

After joining Odermatt, Tissi didn’t become an extension of his style. They were very different types, and their collaboration was based on mutual criticism rather than mutual work: they created things separately and exchanged feedback in the process. They were doing print and type design, mostly for cultural institutes and publishing houses. Over time Tiss and Odermatt also became life partners.

Cover for UCLA/Extension (University of California Los Angeles) Winter Quarter, 1994.
© Rosmarie Tissi, Zurich.

i have always reduced my design to the essential, employed only few elements and played with the proportions and the empty spaces. —rosmarie tissi

Rosmarie Tissi, 2001. Photo by Niklaus Staus.

on the road

Rosmarie Tissi done a lot of traveling (usually by herself, without Odermatt). She visited about 70 countries with lectures and workshops, was teaching at the Yale University and the Rhode Island School of Design. But her posters traveled even further — they have been exhibited across the world, from Tokyo to Essen and from New York to Warsaw.