By the 1950s Switzerland had just stepped out of the shadow of WWII and, as a neutral country, Zürich and Basel had become the two most rational cities in all of Europe. Josef Müller-Brockmann, Armin Hofmann and Max Bill pushed the Bauhaus legacy of 'grid + sans-serif' to its extreme.

There were just four rules: (1) all layout sits on a mathematical grid (2) type must be sans-serif (ideally Helvetica, only released in 1957) (3) white space matters more than content (4) use photography, not illustration.

What those rules built became the look of everything that has seemed 'professional' for seventy years since — from Lufthansa, SBB railways and Olympic posters to today's Notion, Linear, Stripe and the Apple HIG. If your design reads as 'characterless but credible,' congratulations — you've done Swiss Style right.