twen
Twen (short for ″twenty″) was a magazine for the first generation of postwar teens and young adults. It was a wild conglomeration of the controversial ideas and blooming freedoms of the 1950s. A big part of the impact came from Willy Fleckhaus’ design: a 12-column modular grid with already familiar blown-up headlines set in Schmalfette Grotesk; psychedelic illustrations; extremely tightly cropped or enlarged black-and-white photos, and, of course, a lot of white space perfectly arranged on the page. Twen was stunning, groundbreaking, sometimes shocking (Fleckhaus used a photo of his wife giving birth in one issue) and definitely something that had never been seen before.
Twen magazine, issue 6, 1969. Cover designed by Willy Fleckhaus. Photo by Guido Mangold.
Twen magazine, issue 2, 1962. Cover designed by Willy Fleckhaus.
Twen magazine, issue 2, 1969. Pages 88–89. Layout designed by Willy Fleckhaus, photo by Charlotte March.
if I take a short word and make its letters 30 centimeters high, it has an extraordinarily dramatic impact. —willy fleckhaus
A fragment of the cover of “Man in the Holocene” book by Max Frisch. Suhrkamp publishing house, 1979. Cover designed by Willy Fleckhaus.
europe’s first art director
Twen was a high point in Fleckhaus’ career and set in motion great changes in periodicals throughout Europe. The idea of the importance of the position of art director went from almost nothing (at least in Germany at that time) to a position toward the very top of the magazine hierarchy. Twen was never defined by its editors, who came and went, unhappy at the total dominance of design. Only one other designer was so dominant: the mighty Alexey Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar in New York. In Germany and perhaps across Europe, Willy Fleckhaus was the great pioneer of art direction.
Willy Fleckhaus, Hersteller Scharlemann and Christian Diener, 1964.