Ruder first began teaching in 1942 at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in the Swiss city of Basel. There, he was in charge of typography for trade students. He became the head of the Department of Apprentices in Applied arts by 1947. In 1947 Ruder met the artist-printer Armin Hofmann. Ruder and Hoffman began a long period of collaboration. Their teaching achieved an international reputation by the mid-1950s. By the mid-1960s their courses were maintaining lengthy waiting lists. He was a contributing writer and editor for "Typografische Monatsblätter" (Typographic Monthly), which was a popular trade publication of the time. In 1946, his design was unsuccessful in the competition for the cover design of "Typographische Monatsblätter". During the post war years when, in almost every field of applied art, there was still no sign of transition to a new form of expression better fitted to the times, Emil Ruder was one of the first pioneers to discard all of the conventional rules of traditional typography and to establish new laws of composition more in accord with the modern era. In spite of his bent for pictorial thinking, he is never tempted to indulge in merely playful designs in which the actual purpose of printing - legibility - is lost. Ruder's insistence that the primary aim of typography was communication did not exclude aesthetic affects. Contrast was one of his methods. He was essentially devoted to the craft of letterpress printing. From 1946, Emil Ruder slowly emerged in "Typografische Monatsblätter" as an exponent of Modernism. Between 1957 and 1959 he contributed a series of four articles with the title 'Wesentliches' (Fundamentals):'The Plane', 'The Line', 'The Word' and 'Rhythm'. They formed the basis of his thinking, summed up in 1967 in the book "Typography". In 1952, "Schweizer Graphische Mitteilungen" (SGM) fused with "Revue Suisse de I'Imprimerie" and "Typographische Monatsblätter" into a single monthly publication known by the initials "TM".Emil Ruder was among the chief figures in the new magazine, and was a key force in typographical thinking. Three articles, in February 1952, established Ruder as a supporter of radical change. In January 1952, the first issue of the combined magazines retained Times as the text typeface; He introduced Monotype in the February issue that included his Bauhaus article.