Swiss Style is the belief that clarity is a moral position: the designer as neutral conduit, the grid as constitution. It is also the unacknowledged house style of the web. Flush-left sans on a column grid is what CSS wants to do anyway. The tell of real Swiss work isn’t Helvetica; it’s restrained asymmetry: tension held on purpose, never centered into peace.

The canon is small and worth reading first-hand:

• The International Typographic Style, the movement’s proper name, argued out of Basel and Zürich.
• Josef Müller-Brockmann, who turned the grid into a rulebook the rest of us still photocopy.
• Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s film on the typeface that became the style’s mascot.

Hustwit’s trailer makes the argument in ninety seconds: