The Unruly Weingartian Axiom
To my family, who has never given up on me and always supported me.
And my beautiful girlfriend, without whom, this book would not exist.
The Unruly Weingartian Axiom: An Analysis on Wolfgang Weingart’s Process and Practice of Graphic Design
Design by
Mark Roble
School
Corcoran School of the Arts & Design
at The George Washington University
Instructor
Johan Severtson
Thesis
BFA Graphic Design
Table of Contents
Introduction 6 Color
or Lack-thereof
12
Composition
the Revenge of the Swiss 20
Messages
is Anyone out There?
28
Comprehension
But What Does It Mean?
38
Background
the Beginnings and Before 46
Conclusion 54 Interview 60
Wolfgang Weingart (born 1941) is a German designer and instructor best known for his bold and evolutionary advances in typography. At the young age of 27, he was invited by renowned designer/mentor Armin Hoffman to teach the typography course at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland; the class caught the attention of designers from all over the world who were intrigued by Weingart’s unique and groundbreaking experimental type treatments (AIGA). It was at this school where he is credited with being the pioneer of “New Wave” design, also known as Swiss Punk Typography (Graphic Design: A New History).
In my thesis, I will focus primarily on Weingart’s influ-
ential and radical typography (including his iconic poster designs), and the effect that it has left on international design. In addition to his work, he has a rich background of diverse apprenticeships and a history of teaching courses at highly reputed institutions, both of which are beneficial to explore. One of the most interesting and intriguing parts of Weingart’s long career is the large number of techniques and practices he used to develop his own visual language. The typeshop at the Basel School was his own personal studio, in addition to his classroom; it was here where he picked up where he left off in the experiments he started during his previous apprenticeships. He created circular plaster compositions out of curved steel rules; he experimented with interwoven geometric text compositions that took influence in the ancient stone construction of the Middle East (AIGA). “I was motivated to provoke this stodgy profession and to stretch the typeshop’s capabilities to the breaking point. Accelerated by the social unrest of our generation, the force behind Swiss Typography and its philosophy of reduction was losing its international hold. My students were inspired, we were on to something different, and we knew it” (Weingart: Typography—My Way to Typography).
7
What makes Weingart so important to design today? I believe that his philosophy of making things differently, and to challenge us to create new and unique ideas is something still very important. During his 37-year tenure at the Basel School, he lectured not about order and systems and structure; but, rather, he encouraged his students to engage in a process of investigation. Terry Irwin, with whom Weingart studied while at the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon from 1983 to 1986, recalled his style of teaching: “He would come around and tell you the impression [your sketches] were giving, so you were trying to figure out what that meant. And you’d move it around a little more—probably still confused—and he’d come around and say, ‘Yes, better.’ And then he’d leave. And you’d be trying to figure out why it was better. 8
But you came to understand ‘why’ yourself through these comments...It was an incredibly impactful way to learn” (AIGA).In addition to the publications that Weingart has
Wolfgang Weingart, Basel Kunstkredit, 1978
written himself, much has been written about his work and teaching, including a collection of statements from 77 of his students at the Basel School (1968 – 2004), titled Weingart: The Man and the Machine. There is a plethora of information on Weingart available, and he has been acknowledged multiple times for his work: such recognitions include the AIGA 2013 medal, an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts by the Massachusetts College of Arts and Design, and having multiple pieces of his work in the permanent collection of MoMA in New York.
One fascinating aspect of Weingart’s work is the
era in which (most of) it was created. These days, it can seem plausible for this work to be done digitally on the computer, but to think of him setting all of the type by hand, and creating everything by purely physical manipulation, is a wonder. It would be interesting to compare and contrast Weingart’s work to that of design and typography invented in the modern, digital age; to find out how Weingart’s work benefited from being made in that age, and what we can learn from that and apply to design today.
What will I intend to learn in studying Weingart’s work? To start, I want to try to understand his creative process, and how it affected his typographic experiments. Most people understand why his work in the “New Wave” was so influential to design, but I want to explore how he came about creating work in this way. Weingart has such incredible usage of color, contrast, balance, rhythm, and “punk” aesthetic in his designs that I want to know as much as possible about what went into creating these compositions. His work stands apart from most other typographers and 10
designers, and to understand his work is an exciting and demanding process and incredibly beneficial, as a designer, to examine.
I want to prove that Weingart’s unique and innovative
processes make him one of the most influential designers of his time, and that his work will be influential and relevant for years to come. I will prove this through analysis of his process and the messages behind his work, as well as understanding his rich background and the interaction that he has had with fellow designers.
“What’s the use of being legible, when nothing inspires you to take notice of it?” —Wolfgang Weingart
Color: or Lack-thereof One of the primary signifiers of a design—and sometimes the most important—is its color; from the branding of a corporate fast food chain, to the black I-Beams on a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe building (Mies), color helps to communicate the ideas, essence, and purpose of a design. Some designs can be very liberal in their tonal range and have a wide spectrum of color, others using very minimal or no color. The color of a design can oftentimes represent the era in which it was created, the political climate, and most commonly, the cultural nuances it reflects (Bowers).
In the case of certain designers—and this is definitely true for Wolfgang Weingart—the designer’s work can also be recognized by its lack of color. At the genesis of Weingart’s experiments with typography—and what later came to be known as the New Wave movement in design—Swiss typography had already gained a reputation the world over. The movement had gained traction in the beginning of the 1960s, thanks to designers such as Josef Müller-Brockmann and Rudolph de Harak (Meggs); it had become synonymous with global corporate design, and as such was dubbed the “International Typographic Style” (Tam).
When Weingart arrived at the Basel
School of Design in Switzerland in 1964, Swiss typography was at its zenith. In a class that he attended, which was taught by Armin Hoffmann (Tam), he chose not to work on a line composition using rules and pens as instructed, but rather to create his own contraption in the type shop; it was in this class where he both literally and figuratively bent the rule of classical Swiss typography. His innovation held brilliance in its simplicity: It was based on a single plank of wood that had L-shaped hooks screwed on it in a grid, which were then turned at 0, 45, and 90 degree angles to create compositions, and was then inked and printed on a letterpress. The hooks were screwed at
15
Wolfgang Weingart Mustermesse Basel Kunstkredit 1978/79
different levels so some were printed at type-high, and others not (Tam). This process—along with other experiments he produced in the type shop— was able to produce unique and dramatic black and white designs, and the perspectives formed by this were dramatic and abstract, and did not require color.
The hierarchy of a composition can alter significantly based on
the hue and value of its elements (Bowers). In an achromatic (meaning no hue; only black and white) design—such as many of Weingart’s—the perspectives and groupings of elements are achieved through the variances in value, in that there is no intensity nor temperature to be affected in hue. Classical traditions suggest that the core of a design lies in linear structures and tonal relationships, and not in cursory optical effects (hue, intensity, luminosity) (Lupton + Cole Phillips). Although Weingart was not always known for having the most structurally sound and linear compositions, the tonal relationships in his work are indisputably incredibly strong and dynamic, and set engaging and abstract inflections.
What can color represent? Often times, the messages
techniques of creating images, he adopted
can be tied to their culture. For example: black
the use of halftone screens and Ben-Day
connotes death and mourning in the West, but it
dot films, that were often used in photome-
is white in the East (Bowers). For these reasons,
chanical processes during the mid-1970s
color is relative; although the optics of our eyes all
(AIGA). His radical new approach of using
perceive color the same way, it is the way in which
a repro camera to blur, cut, and stretch
we interpret it which gives it meaning. We associate
the films created a new way of seamlessly
red, orange, and yellow as warm, because the things
combining continuous-tone images and
they reflect in nature (fire, sunlight) are literally warm;
letters; this technique can be seen promi-
the same can be said for violet, green, and blue as
nently in his poster designs for the Basel
cool, with their affiliation to water and sky (Bowers).
Kunstkredit between 1976 and 1979.
Many of these strong, deep reds were used in Swiss design, and abandoning these strong hues in favor of grayscale is reflective of his rebellious New Wave aesthetics.
One of the reasons why Weingart did not
use color in the vast majority of his work may have been because of his many innovative and unique processes. In his never-ending quest for finding new
Although Weingart’s work is predominantly grayscale, some of his work does feature color. For example, his poster series for Didacta Eurodidac in 1981 was created using an offset lithographic, but also with color introduced. The compositions feature elements similar to his other pieces (photo montage, cut images, dot patterns, grid lines), and with a limited palette of warm, red-orange hues that highlight certain parts of the design. The horizontal lines help to highlight or emphasize the text, while the diagonal 45 degree lines cut through other graphical elements, creating a strong sense of motion. Weingart’s other works have achieved similar effects of motion and perspective in black and white, but the introduction of color into this design produces a different level of depth. By having the colored elements of the composition be at a much lighter value (or intensity) than the achromatic parts, it creates a sense of dimensionality, where the hues either will lay above or below the elements without color.
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Wolfgang Weingart Herbert Bayer, Das kĂźnstlerische Werk 1918-1938 1982
Wolfgang Weingart is from an older age, and fundamentally prefers to use the tools and practices from those eras: “I work with very simple tools […] that’s very important. Coming back now to the classical type shop […] is a wonderful challenge to train your mind for creativity and to find solutions. I don’t need complex machinery to say something […] This is the reason why I don’t work with computers” (Tam). It is for these reasons that Weingart did not allow his students to design on the computer, and he spoke of the tactile advantages of designing physically. It can be surmised from these simple, classical techniques and practices by Weingart that he did not see a need to use much color in his work; but where these parts of his work could be seen as “classical,” the same cannot be said for his bold and radical treatments of type and image, such as in the birth of New Wave design.
These same ideals were held true in Weingart’s
teachings. Contrast is a critical tool of typography, and usually the starting point is black type on a white background; only after the form and structure of a design is realized should color be applied. Used in an additive process, Weingart’s instructions were most likely inspired by Armin Hofmann’s teachings on color. In Weingart’s classes in the 1980s, his students laid colored paper under the text structure, and then produced gradations of light and dark color scales. Hofmann campaigned for careful and sensitive use of color and graphic design, and Weingart upheld these feelings (Weingart Typography).
“I work with very simple tools—I don’t need complex machinery to say something”
—Wolfgang Weingart
Looking at his work under the scrutiny of a microscope, new things will manifest every time; Weingart is a master of photo collage and typography, and his proficiency in marrying the two is something that sets him apart from other graphic designers. The way that he is able to blend, blur, and bring together the elements in his compositions, as well as disconnecting them, is fascinating enough to where it does not require color.
Throughout his storied career as both designer
and instructor, Weingart is famous for and credited with starting new movements and being a part of many profound and innovative processes in his field. His rebellious character at the Basel School propelled him to an illustrious path that changed the way we look at graphic design. Of all the things engaging and striking in his work, use of vibrant color was not necessary—if at all. It is a challenge to work with a limited, achromatic palette, but the techniques that Weingart created and practiced were so powerful and nuanced that absence of color was in no way a deficit.
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Wolfgang Weingart Typographic Process Nr. 4 1971–72
Compo sition:
the Revenge of the Swiss Throughout his storied career as both designer and instructor, Wolfgang Weingart is known as a master of many practices, and the uncompromising compositions he has created are no exception. He has spoken at length about his teaching practices, and his philosophies that influenced his courses. Even though the majority of Weingart’s work appears to be very chaotic in nature—which is true—there is a certain order to this chaos; an order that may be more calculated and structured than one may think.
In line with striking this harmony of order and chaos in his work, Weingart also emphasized the importance of balancing the freedom and control in his classes. He viewed himself as a guide and working partner who would inspire his students, to teach them design principles with “great freedom within a large, but nevertheless defined sphere” (Design Quarterly 16). This held true with the Basel School’s approach of teaching programs that were constantly evolving and a place for experimentation. In his designs, he tries to see how far the boundaries of typography can be pushed and still retain its meaning; to prove that graphic modifications of type can intensify its meaning (Tam 1). 22
One design by Weingart that illustrates success through illegibility is his Fabrica Treviso poster from 1998. While being limited in pallet (only one red hue used in addition to black ink), the poster features highly abstracted and handwritten letterforms; the asymmetrical composition and sketch-like feel represent what Weingart’s process may feel like. The title of the poster, “Fabrica Treviso,” is hardly visible, but is still at the appropriate and numberone level of hierarchy for its content. The title—as well as other important elements, such as the dates—is highlighted by the medium-red hue that lies below the black type, but is still not instantly recognizable as the primary piece of information. Other scratchy, handwritten text fills the composition, and is mixed together and overlaps other arbitrary geometric shapes. It may be difficult to understand exactly what message the poster is conveying, but there is a genius to the contemporary font choice (digital, pixel-based fonts of the late 1990s) and systematically-abstract forms that fill the design. The bit-mapped, handwritten letterforms appear to be manipulated digitally, which is a departure from the majority of Weingart’s earlier, handmade work—perhaps this is indicative of the time that the piece was created.
Wolfgang Weingart Fabrica Treviso 1998
Although primarily seen as an enemy in Weingart’s work and practices, Swiss Typography does have a strong and influential foundation in his designs. While Swiss Typography was practiced and taught frequently around the time he started teaching in 1968, Weingart reacted against the culture with its conservative design tenets, and felt that it crippled his experimental and inquisitive nature. But at the same time, he felt Swiss Typography did have many positive components to use as a base for his radically new typographic compositions (Design Quarterly 1). Through these basic principles of Swiss Typography, Weingart was able to teach his students that designs may be chaotic, but also should have hidden structure underneath and visual order.
In all compositions, there are a few elements that are essen-
tial to making a composition complete and successful. One of the most important of those elements—and something that Weingart valued in his work—is structure. Whether natural or man-made, all forms have an underlying structure (Bowers 80). Structure creates meaning and a sense of continuity, as well as allowing multiple elements to be understood as a whole. Moreover, below most successful structures is a strong and well designed grid, which creates intersections of lines that result in modules in which components can be placed (Bowers 81).
Take for example one of Weingart’s poster designs for the Basel Kunstkredit in 1976, that features a partially-visible grid. The design features elements from his unique photo-collage techniques with transparent film mixed with letterpress lead type. The poster has so many elements that led into each other and constantly cause the eye to move around the image, but underneath, it is clear that the type and other components lay on a grid; the piece shows strong hints of influence from Russian Constructivism of the early 20th Century. The type, while being set in multiple sizes, colors—as well as sometimes running vertically—is set on a baseline grid, and all the necessary areas of information are organized together (much neater than the type in his Fabrica Treviso poster seen earlier). The visual, photographic elements are cropped, overlapped, and are laid out in dynamic ways, yet it is still apparent what each element is and how they are separate from one another. This is made possible in part by having the elements placed on different grounds and the design having a strong sense of depth.
Weingart believes that the care in execution from the start to
the finish in one’s work will determine its quality, and this only gets more important with the ever-expanding and complex practices of typography (Design Quarterly 8). Weingart taught his students using multiple media (namely lead type and transparent film), and the blending of these two media has boundless opportunities. He also believed in teaching the simpler principles of typography before attempting to make a design more intricate: “I am convinced that intensive investigation of elementary typographic exercises is a per-requisite for the solution of complex typographic problems” (Design Quarterly 3).
25
These principles of understanding the
the “E” in the top-right corner of the composition),
simple before attempting to portray
and create continuity that is echoed throughout the
the complex can be seen in one of his
flow of the piece.
handset type compositions from 1971.
Although this design is in no way “sim-
they needed to understand design and typographic
ple,” it does feature fewer components
principles in a way to keep them constantly exploring
than his photo-collage pieces, and
their own compositions. He invented what he calls
is purely typographic in its elements.
the “typographic backpack system,” a teaching
This design features only a handful of
method by which students gain knowledge and
letters—with few curves—and they all
experience of typographic vocabulary that they can
lay on either 90 or 180-degree angles.
apply later to their own work (Design Quarterly 4).
A grid does appear more obvious in
The students’ backpacks are to be constantly filled
this design than in his others, and
with experiences and ingredients, and he used this
the letters are all grouped together,
system to best teach the fundamentals of learning
and only printed in one shade (black).
and working with typography. Much like the students’
But the design does feature a strong
“backpacks,” Weingart’s work is ever-changing, and
sense of hierarchy, with the letters
compositionally has such a strong sense of “chaotic”
being printed in varying sizes and the
range. Creativity cannot be taught—nor can chaos—
groupings of elements featuring a
but in trying to understand the systems behind his
variety of scale. The dots or periods
chaos, we can find a sense of structure and order.
move away from some elements (like
26
Wolfgang Weingart, Handset Type Composition, 1971
Weingart gave his students the tools that
Wolfgang Weingart, Basel Kunstkredit, 1976
is
MESSA MESSA MESSAG MESSAG One of the many principles that separate design from fine art is that design must inherently serve a function; in the most rudimentary sense, a Claude Monet painting on a wall will look nice, but it will not tell you which way the bathroom is (or at least it should not). And while graphic design goes well beyond the realm of way-finding systems in a public area, at its core level, it should be trying to communicate something to the viewer. This is not to say art cannot communicate as well. On the contrary, most well-regarded pieces of art are rich in messages and themes, but perhaps graphic design should be more universal.
out
anyone
AGES: AGES: AGES: GES: there
?
Being straight forward is not something that is often in Wolfgang Weingart’s wheelhouse. Being renowned for doing things in his own tradition and being inventive in his abstract designs, merely telling which way the bathroom is will probably not be the only message in one of his designs. Through finding common ground with its audience, a good design will understand the shared
is why he can “have a different face” for designs
experiences and values with which we
created in more practical purposes that can be easily
interpret messages and from which we
discerned by an everyday audience (Tam 4).
derive meaning. Messages are viewed
through a particular point of view, can
a wealth of work ranging from experimental and
be situated in certain cultural contexts,
abstract, to more practical work. His first practi-
physical locations, and are influenced
cal assignment came when he was working at
by many disciplines (Bowers 15).
the Basel School of Design in 1979, and it was a
Weingart understands this, and that
student-teacher project for the Mustermesse Basel
This apparent dichotomy is why Weingart has
(Swiss Industries Fair). The project was to create a worldformat poster (also known as F4 format, 89.5 x 128 cm) with the motto “Colorful Switzerland, Lively Switzerland” (Weingart 440). The assignment was of international appeal, and to be translated to four different languages, as well as displayed on other printed materials (multicolored brochures, catalogue covers, promotional stickers, stationery, and postage stamps).
31
Wolfgang Weingart, Resulting photo prints of the M-cube, arranged in sequence for selection, 1965/66
Wolfgang Weingart Official Catalogue for the international convention, Art II 1980
The three-hundred-page catalogue
This simple, clean, organized, hierarchi-
that aided the project was the primary
cal text is meant to simply inform the
source for information on the fair, and
viewer of what the fair has to offer and
had to be both readable at a glance
where to find it; God is in the details of
for all ages, as well as easy to follow
this design, and the focused neutrality
in all four languages (Weingart 440).
and control represent an equality
Designing in multiple languages
among the different languages. All the
(especially four) can be quite the
languages have the same hierarchy,
challenge, and this practice is inherent
and this is representative of informa-
to designers with the same cultural
tion design. Akin to a train schedule or
and geographical background as
highway sign, the information should
Weingart—many of them learning and
be extremely precise (a common theme
working in multiple languages through-
in Swiss design), and this is reflected in
out their careers. The catalogue was
Weingart’s catalogue.
conceptually organized around four
main sections (Index of Exhibitors,
catalogue designs, the time in which
Index of Artists, Illustrated pages,
Wolfgang Weingart invented New
and Supplement); the four sections
Wave Typography was a rapidly
were differentiated and signified
changing era for design, and the world.
by their own typographic element
Cultural norms of the 1960s and ‘70s
that was printed on the edge of the
were being questioned; accepted
page, making them visible when the
viewpoints were being challenged; the
catalogue was closed. The double-
social, economic, and environmental
page spreads feature the numbers in
awareness led many to rebel from
a large and bold weight on the right
the modern aesthetic that was all too
edge of the page, that easily direct
prevalent in this post-industrial land-
the viewer to whatever section he/she
scape. Thus postmodernism was born,
is trying to find. The type featured on
and what this meant for design was a
these spreads is carefully organized
defiance of the international rules, so
and neat—a clear departure from
ubiquitous since the Bauhaus (Meggs
Weingart’s earlier work.
491). Ideology and rules collapsed in
Unlike the neutrality of his
33
these waves of new ideas and innovation, and at the forefront of this movement was Weingart. His lead type treatments threw out the old rules: Emphasis on headlines was laid out in white, sans-serif type on a chunky, black rectangle; gone away was wide letter-spacing of metal type, and tightly spaced phototype was explored. When asked to describe the kinds of type he created, Weingart replied with “sunshine type, bunny type, ant type, five-minute type, typewriter type, and for-thepeople type” (Meggs 496). These humorous and expressive descriptions he used helped to define his typographic methodologies
Weingart’s acclaimed collage techniques are featured strongly in
his 1984 poster design for Das Schweizer Plakat (The Swiss Poster). The process consisted of multiple film positives arranged and stacked, then exposed with tight and precise registration to produce one negative. Such as in Das Schweizer Plakat, the image produced the interaction of two colors, that are overprinted to create dimensional layers of illusionist form (Meggs 496). The juxtaposition of texturing and the methods in which type was unified are created in an unprecedented 34
manor, and this abstraction helps the unique methods that Weingart uses to form structure. The subtle shape of the Matterhorn mountain in the top of the image implies Switzerland, and such is repeated with the cross from the Swiss flag on the right side of the poster. The bright colors (which are rare in Weingart’s work) also are strong signifiers of Swiss heritage, but the chaotic and angular forms are not resemblant of classical Swiss typography. His fracturing of the gridded surface represents the destruction of the rational mind, and the defilement of the typographic message is analogous to language that did not always represent the conscious, rational mind; but rather a subrational self (Margolin 184).
“Sunshine type, bunny type, ant type, five-minute type, typewriter type, and for-the-people type” —Wolfgang Weingart
Wolfgang Weingart, Das Schweizer Plakat, 1983
As a typographer, Weingart has always been interested in seeing how far type can be pushed and modified to intensify meaning (Tam 1). In his earlier days, Weingart experimented with single letterforms in the type shop of Emil Ruder’s class at the Basel School (Weingart 232). He metaphorically described certain letters, saying: “B is a fragile flower, Z is a dazzling thunderbolt, L is three o’clock, W is a bird flying away, and M is an arrow pointing to itself” (Weingart 232). He was drawn to the letter M (or rather, the letter was drawn to him, as he says), and examined it for many years. He constructed a cube with the letter M printed on it, and photographed it from all angles; this process allowed him to achieve various sizes and three-dimensional views of the letter in perspective that he would not have been able to acquire otherwise.
Wolfgang Weingart Basel Kunstkredit 1978
With these dynamic letterforms, he found other ways of creating messages. He looked for visual relationships among the shapes, and assembled them in various arrangements; putting them under each other, on top of each other, side by side, touching, or overlapping (Weingart 234). The compositions resulting reminded Weingart of the outlines of a Syrian field, or the large-scale wall murals of northern India (Weingart 234). Instead of just laying out words on a page, Weingart was always looking for new ways of communication; ways that would help to change the ways we view typography and graphic design. And whether it be obscuring certain letterforms, creating haphazard forms and overlapping shapes that do not seem to fit on any grid, he was always trying to push our understanding of design and see what limits—if any—are out there.
37
Comprehensive: But What Does It Mean? Wolfgang Weingart is not the only designer to experiment with the combination of lead and photo type; he is not the only to create lithographic montages; and he is not even the only one to rebel against Swiss Typography. So then why do we study him, and why is his work invaluable to graphic design on an international level? What should we look at when we examine his work? How should we begin to understand it? For starters, one should know what led him to achieve eminence, what his work represents, and understand his one-of-a-kind aesthetic values and styles.
To begin, we must look to understand the processes
that Weingart uses in creating his designs. Something that immediately sets Weingart apart from other designers in the field is the level of involvement he takes in his work, as well as his innovation. He is known for implementing what is known as the “Gutenberg approach� to his work: designers, similar to early typographic printers, should seek to be involved in all aspects of the process (concept, typesetting, pre-press production) to ensure an accurate outcome of the designer’s vision (Meggs 496). His design for 18th Didacta/ Eurodidac is a perfect example of Weingart being involved in all aspects of the process, as well as using his personal experiences in the messaging of the piece.
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Wolfgang Weingart 18th Didacta/Eurodidac 1980/81
18th Didacta/Eurodidac is a classic example of Weingart’s work, and exemplifies many of the characteristics that make his work so well known. Reduced use of color is one of the most recognizable characteristics of Weingart’s work, and this piece follows suit. Like most of his designs, this poster has only a couple of colors; the orange and yellow hues are visually pleasing against the grayscale tones, but they were not chosen solely for aesthetic reasons. In 1977, Weingart was invited to partake in a competition held by the Swiss Federal Department of Home Affairs in Bern for scholarships in applied art. The posters—albeit not ultimately chosen by the committee—were meant to represent Swiss/German culture, and the colors chosen represent the colors of the city of Baden, the same regional flag that was flown during Weingart’s childhood in the 1940s when the Duke of Baden was home (Weingart 466). These memories from his childhood, along with the proposed colors for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, are what inspired yellow and orange to be his favorite colors (Weingart 29).
The combination of media is something that has always
aided Weingart’s designs and what has made them unparalleled. In the mid-1970s, he started working with transparent films, which led to a number of breakthroughs. For starters, the transparency of the film allowed the designer to see what the composition would look like before exposing or printing; this is in strict opposition to metal type, which was only realized once printed (Design Quarterly 8). Weingart, like most other designers of the time, was taught to lay out type using lead type, and his classical training enhanced his experimentations with photo type. Photo type is much easier to manipulate and stretch, and for Weingart, led to boundless possibilities once combined with lead type.
Wolfgang Weingart, 18th Didacta/Eurodidac, 1980/81 (detail)
18th Didacta/Eurodidac features many elements and processes from Weingart’s toolbox, most notably is his rich use of photo collage. With the lithographic approach, he was able to cut out and combine images with text, and set them on multiple layers to create levels of hierarchy and depth. The first thing read is “18. DIDACTA EURODIDAC,” and that is because of the heavy, sans-serif style and weight of the type, along with its dark value. The words are highlighted by the orange/yellow hues used throughout the piece to create extra emphasis. Secondary information—such as the date and location—are composed at the top of the format, and although still dark and heavy, the type is reduced considerably, to suggest its level of hierarchy. Many visual elements—either photographic or not—are cut out and overlaid in exciting positions and dramatic angles; the influence of artists like Robert Rauschenberg is evident here. The free-form cutouts were done by hand by Weingart’s scissors, and do not fall victim to the confines of the grid beneath. But unlike artists like Rauschenberg, his compositions are less abstracted and do have an underlying function, as well as a clearer message.
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Weingart’s work exhibits exemplary technique and attention to detail. Thematically, the poster aptly named for the 18th Didacta/Eurodidac at the Mustermesse convention center, represents an everyday classroom environment. Weingart uses images of a student working at a light table, a teacher at a blackboard, stacks of printing papers on wooden skids; all the images are photographed using a Polaroid and manipulated in the darkroom (Weingart 464). The elements depicted are truthfully of an everyday classroom, but their compositional placement bring a message of much more; it represents what makes a Swiss classroom different from others around the world, and how the combination of different graphical styles reflects the progressive nature of the Swiss education.
In all, it can be said that the practices and processes
that Weingart created during his tenure at the Basel School of Design are what shaped his career; from the instructions from Emil Ruder in his early career, to countless hours and 44
explorations in the school’s type shop, Weingart always wants to invent new ways of thinking. Just like his rebellion against Swiss Typography and subsequent foundation of New Wave Typography, it is his desire to defy the rules and create unique processes that makes him so important to design. A much greater appreciation for his work may be gained through examining his techniques and attempting to understand his thought process, helping one to learn new ideas and ways to look at graphic design as a whole.
“Electronic equipment replaces neither eyes, hands, nor Heart.” —Wolfgang Weingart
:dnuorgkcaB the Beginnings and Before One of the many principles that separate design from fine art is that design must inherently serve a function; in the most rudimentary sense, a Claude Monet painting on a wall will look nice, but it will not tell you which way the bathroom is (or at least it should not). And while graphic design goes well beyond the realm of way-finding systems in a public area, at its core level, it should be trying to communicate something to the viewer. This is not to say art cannot communicate as well. On the contrary, most well-regarded pieces of art are rich in messages and themes, but perhaps graphic design should be more universal.
An event that Weingart remembers like a permanent scar was during an air raid eleven months before the end of World War II. At the young age of three in 1944, one evening he and his mother headed in terror to their cellar to take refuge from an air raid. The attacks took place eighteen miles from his house in the small town of Friedrichshafen, and bombarded and obliterated the town; the town was a target of Allied forces for many years, being an industrial site that saw the production of hundreds of thousands of engines for tanks 48
for the German military (Weingart 23). The wartime was hard on the Weingart family, with food and resources being scarce, and his mother had to turn to using a wood-burning combustion engine in her car. Despite these challenges and hardships, his mother was valued for her medical skills in their small community, and as such, the family was compensated by being hosted for meals in the town (Weingart 28).
In the spring of 1948, Weingart and his mother moved
into the Castle of Salem; the once church-owned castle had transitioned in recent history to being state-owned, and they were able to live in two small rooms, that had heating difficulties (Weingart 32). Other than his daily chore of fetching water for the rooms, he scarcely left the rooms, and his freedom amongst the castle was constrained. He lived this way for several years, and was not permitted to festivities nor the private chambers where the Duke received European nobility.
But Weingart was able to make light of his situation, and took advantage of the keyhole in his room (that was the perfect size and height from the floor for a child) and was able to view the comings and goings of the international princes, princesses, duchesses, ladies, barons, and other honorable guests (Weingart 32).
Wolfgang Weingart Zeiss-Ikon small-format camera The old city of Tetuรกn in the Former Spanish Morocco 1954
Wolfgang Weingart Watercolor Influenced by the painter and Bauhaus teacher, Lyonel Feininger 1960
Things were not much better for Weingart in primary school; he claims his capacity in the majority of courses was completely incomprehensible, and this was furthered by his strict instructors forcing the students to pray at the beginning of class, and the constant threat of corporal punishment in the classroom (Weingart 33). To usurp his usually poor ability to correctly answer questions during lectures, Weingart drilled a series of holes at various sizes in his desk, and placed his textbooks underneath to be in his sight line. These peak holes were also aided by a small battery-operated contraption that he devised, which powered two spindles holding a looped cheat sheet; Weingart wrote down notes relevant to the day’s lecture before the lecture on the scroll (Weingart 33). His natural sense of independence caused him to struggle in a rural community, and he cites this as why he resorted to the challenge of competing with himself.
Throughout his childhood, one of Weingart’s
most cherished hobbies was tinkering and fixing up household objects—one of his favorites being his
motorbike, named Göppel (Tam 2). A particularly influential day to Weingart’s life happened when he crashed his bike into a wire fence while riding along the side of a railroad. He had to use all his strength to retch the bike from its wire prison, and as he continued to bend and manipulate the wires, he noticed the wires created shapes; rough outlines of a house, motorbike, and a landscape. It was that day, for the first time, that he understood his affinity for abstraction, and became aware of his interest in visual design (Weingart 33). This fascination was carried on in his inventions of small walking machines, made of rubber bands, wax, and wooden thread spools; he became known in his village for these creations, and was widely regarded as a very odd young boy (Weingart 33).
Weingart had trouble making sense of
his life at the time, and used to see himself as Wolfgang Weingart
a budding inventor; but he was destined for a
Linocut
life that was more centered on the visual. His
Ship on the ocean
family’s extensive collection of music, from
1959
composers like Bach and Beethoven, were beyond his comprehensive as a child, but the music was able to carry him into a bliss of pictures. Never having the bond of a sibling, his music and bicycle were perhaps his compensation (Weingart 38). Many years after his childhood, he photographed the old city of Tetuán in former Spanish Morocco (in 1954) with a thirty-year-old Rolleiflex camera. Those images he captured were intimately related to his typographic experiments, influencing both his personal work and commissions as an enduring source of inspiration (Weingart 41).
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Wolfgang Weingart, Letters compacted within a cardboard ring for printing, Top and bottom sides of the first Round Composition. Set in six-point semi-bold Berthold Akzidenz-Grotesk, 1962
In his life from 1954 to 1956, Weingart lived in Lisbon, Portugal, and was enrolled in the German school there. He was attracted to the urban nature of the city that was in strict opposition to the rural settings of his childhood. Although Weingart still showed little interest in the majority of his courses, the drawing teacher of the school recognized Weingart’s artistic aptitude, and agreed on private lessons; this was a sign of relief to his parents as they began to inquire among their friends and German colleagues in Lisbon what career paths were possible at the time for Weingart in the art or design fields (Weingart 43). And it was because of his natural talents and interest in the art field that his parents financed his enrollment in the Merz Academy in Stuttgart, Germany in a two-year course in art and design (AIGA).
The beginning of his career at Merz Academy was faced with adversity, noted
by his failure to pass a class in which he had to draw a self-portrait. Nevertheless, he was able to excel in the art of reproduction, such as sketching and planning designs (Weingart 44); this was his passion, and he created watercolors and oil paintings in his spare time as a way for his parents to justify their expenses for the school. In the beginning of his time at the Merz Academy, he was unsure as to why he was there, but later being given free rein in his daily work led to him understanding that he was headed in the right direction.
In the spring of 1960, Weingart began a three-year typesetting apprentice-
ship in Stuttgart (Weingart 54). At the time, typography in Switzerland had worldwide eminence and was leagues ahead of the stale practices in Germany; Swiss typography presented itself to Weingart as an exciting and promising alternative (Weingart 55). During his time at Ruwe Printing, he was introduced to Karl-August Hanke, who instantly became his mentor. Hanke was one of Hofmann’s first students in the early fifties, and his relationship with Weingart was instrumental in Weingart’s understanding of how to define his typographical style (AIGA). Hanke’s initial reaction to Weingart’s work was of long silence, followed by disapproval; ultimately, Hanke explained to Weingart how antiquated German design was, showing no real development for decades; this set Weingart to understand the revolutions in typography that were happening in Switzerland at the time, and is what truly set the stage for his time at the Basel School of Design, where the true genesis of Weingart’s career was located.
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Conclusion:
If one were to ask what is most memorable or important about Wolfgang Weingart’s long career as designer and typographer, it would not be easy to answer simply. One could not pick out a single accomplishment of his and definitively say that it is the most important; rather, he should be remembered by his work as a whole, and the practices and precedents that he has changed and revolutionized in the field. From his early days at the Basel School of Design, Weingart has always been innovative in his technique and processes, and there is much we can learn from his work.
Starting with his early rebellion against
Swiss typography, Weingart has always sought to change graphic design. When asked about his work for Typografische Monatsblätter in the 1970s, he said, “My idea was to change graphic design, Swiss graphic design, from this very strict way of making typography to a more lively way. And it had some effect, internationally too” (TM). He was not interested in creating work in the exact same fashion as many designers had done before him, and instead used the tools available to him to create his own style. This style, “New Wave,” or Swiss Punk Typography, may be the most influential invention of Weingart’s (Graphic Design: A New History).
It is not only in the type shop where Weingart has left his mark, but also in the classroom. Weingart taught most memorably at the Basel School of Design for many years, and he pushed his students to try to work in new ways: In the first year and a half, they had to do very basic work. Learn the basics. Then I asked them, ‘What interests you?’ If they had ideas for their own personal project, like a diploma work. Lauralee Alben, for example, found her subject in Superman, [Jim] Faris found something else, and then [Gregory] Vines found that door. So these were kind of research. I was not interested in a single result, but in the research. I was interested in process-oriented teaching, which Hofmann and other teachers shared too. (TM)
It was Armin Hofmann’s courage in recruiting the then unknown
27-year-old Weingart to teach the typography class at the Basel School, which garnered interest from designers around the world (AIGA). Weingart was not new to taking bold new approaches in his career, and this just happened to be possibly one of the most important for him. It was in this type shop where he felt at home to experiment and create to his heart’s desire, and the compositions he made helped to shape the rest of his design career.
Looking at design and typography in a new way was always
Weingart’s approach. Instead of picking up where many Swiss typographers left off, he was much more interested in rebelling, and that is why he is studied today. And it is not only the unique work he created that makes him noteworthy, but also the creative and inventive processes that went into his designs. “I was motivated to provoke this stodgy profession and to stretch the typeshop’s capabilities to the breaking point,” Weingart says when speaking about his distaste for the design world at the time (Weingart).
His guidance was far-reaching during his 37-year residence with the Basel School, his students included April Greiman, Jim Faris, Franz Werner, Robert Probst, Jerry Kuyper, and Emily Murphy (AIGA). Weingart believed in his students understanding the rules first and foremost, but then he encouraged them to explore and ask questions; to see how far they could bend and break those rules. That should always be taught in design—to always try to look at something from a new angle or approach, to never settle and do things the easy or antiquated way. Always look for new ways to convey your message, and when you achieve that, you make the meaning that much more impactful. As Weingart says: “What’s the use of being legible, when nothing inspires you to take notice of it?”
Wolfgang Weingart M 1965
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Wolfgang Weingart, Collage 7, 1975, 1974
Working organically is another aspect that is very important to Weingart’s work. Using the word “encourage” is important when describing his teaching methods, as he did not ever want to force his students to work in a certain way. He used Swiss typography as a base for his work, but then tore it apart and pushed it to the limits to develop what became known as his style, or “New Wave.” It was never his intention to create any sort of identity with his work, but he says that it happened to develop that way by chance: “I never intended to create a ‘style.’ It just happened that the students picked up—and misinterpreted— a so called ‘Weingart style’ and spread it around” ( Schwemer-Scheddin). But I believe that the design world can all agree that it is thankful such a “style” was spread so notably.
So what does one do with this information, and knowledge of
Weingart’s body of work? There are many things that working designers can use to apply to their own work; principles, philosophies, techniques, processes, etc. Design is always changing and evolving, but the ideas that Weingart created and developed years ago can still be applied to this day. Good design is timeless, and should not be tied down by or restricted to only one or a couple of eras; contemporary design can benefit largely from “New Wave” typography, and Weingart’s rebellious nature is something that should live on and inspire today’s designers, and a spirit that must never be lost.
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Interview: Throughout the process of writing and designing this thesis, I had the great pleasure of being able to interview someone very knowledgeable of Wolfgang Weingart and his work, Franc NunooQuarcoo. He is currently serving as the director of the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, and has a storied career as designer, writer, educator, and curator. From being born in Accra, Ghana, to later moving to New York City to work for Rudolph de Harak at de Harak and Poulin Associates, Franc has a long career of working with and for notable designers. He received his BA from Dickinson College and his MFA from University of Michigan. His two most notable publications are Paul Rand: Modernist Design (2003), and Bruno Monguzzi: A Designer’s Perspective (1998).
Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo, Paul Rand: Modernist Design, 2003
Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo, Bruno Monguzzi: A Designer’s Perspective, 1998
I firstly asked Franc about his experience with Swiss design, the process of choosing designers for the Swiss design exhibition at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2003, and how he first encountered Weingart.
Franc: I have always been interested in Swiss design, it started when I first got into grad school. I started out at Yale, and then later moved to Michigan. At this time in the 1980s, Yale was incredibly influential as an academic 62
institution for the rest of the country. The design there was very much Swiss-centered. There were some Swiss professors there, such as Armin Hoffman, as well as Paul Rand. That was like a bastion for Swiss design, for Swiss influence for design in the United States.
It was at Yale that I met Tom Strong, and he had a
very large collection of Swiss posters. I went to look at his posters, and he’s got the largest collection of Swiss posters you could imagine. Historical ones all the way, from Herbert Matter all the way through the present, and in there were posters by Bruno Monguzzi, Rosmarie Tissi, Weingart. And you always hear about how Swiss designers only have one way of designing things, and that was it. They’d use Helvetica, or they’d use Grotesk, and everything was flush-left and there was no sort of variation at all, and that could’ve been farther from the truth when I saw these posters.
So I thought [for the exhibition at University of
Maryland, Baltimore County in 2003] to get one designer from each of Switzerland’s major regions, so I got Bruno Monguzzi from the Swiss-Italian side, and Rosemary Tissi from Zurich, and I picked Weingart from the Germanic
side. But the reason I picked Weingart
Then, I asked him to expand on his interview with
was because of Basel and Zurich were
Weingart.
two different schools of thought, and then there was also the Italian side.
Franc: It was four days, three nights, and I would
always stay with the designer when I interviewed
The idea for the exhibition was
to interview the three designers, and
them. And I got to really see how they worked, and
then make a catalog. It was really
how they lived. Weingart took me over to the Basel
fascinating, and I had the same set of
School of Design, and I saw his archives. They were
questions; these questions came from
split, one was in his home, one was in the school. So
Charles Eames, and I wanted to see if
the tools and materials and files made for his work
the questions could reveal a different
were over at the school, and his documents and all
way of thinking about design, and
the other things he had done were over at his home.
surprisingly they did not. They all had
You could see his studio, and there was only one or
their own ways of answering, but the
two computers; this was 1996--97, but it wasn’t the
principles were pretty much all
space that he had taught in; the space that he taught
the same.
in was more letterpress, and phototype and all that; you could see the film overlays and all that.
You’d think these things would be huge, like
Swiss poster size, but they actually made them all proportional; so it’d be like a quarter of the size, you know. Then they’d be blown up, and they were all
Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo
just beautiful collages. So seeing that and also seeing the process, just makes everything so terrific, and that you also got to see how he taught. It wasn’t just that he taught standing in front of the class lecturing, so for me I learned something, this was all very educational to me. The teaching process was more than just standing in front of someone; it was standing next to them, and showing somehow how things are to be done. But he’d never really answer questions like, “Oh this is the answer,” he’d show you how to do it, to a certain point, and then he’d ask you to do it. And then of course he’d move to the next person and come back, and have conversations that were both very practical and conceptual.
And the point is, sometimes we think of these
Swiss designers of being too technical; this is at least not the case with Weingart, and then way that he generates ideas. And the mark-making especially, you could see about twenty ways of making a mark. And although he wouldn’t keep all the versions, there was nothing wrong with keeping three of them; three complete versions. And the rapidity of which he worked was quite astounding, and the decision making was really quite thorough, and quite decisive; nothing was left to chance. He’d start, stop, look around a little bit, and then come back, because as he’s walking around he’s thinking, “Go to lunch, come back. Yeah, yeah, I was thinking while I was at lunch. And I looked over and I saw this texture, maybe I’ll try it, maybe there’s something about X that I can try, that I haven’t tried.” And then that’s how he comes to these solutions.
Franc also shared with me an anecdote about a certain project that Weingart taught, that I found interesting.
Franc: They had to construct something that represented the weather, so they’d have to come up with a graphic or something, say if it was a cold day, that represented the weather that day. So they’d have to pick type that would elicit some sort of idea, and then you had an image that you could manipulate, or construct. So if it’s raining of if it’s snowing, what symbol do you use. It was a small surface, 8”x8”, and how do you tell a story on that size page. So one of the things he did was, he said that the square is a shape that doesn’t commit to anything. You could do things in there that are diagonal, it would be dynamic, or you could do things that would be parallel to the edges. Or it could be that you could divide it into four, you’d have four quadrants, and the dominant element would be on the top-right, and then the rest would be supportive. So you could see all the strategies come together, so all of a sudden, you’d have four or five strategies to use. And that elicits exploration, and it was fascinating watching how many options or iterations he could create, and from the process, starting at his sketches and seeing him work through the options and all that. It was fascinating just watching him.
Wolfgang Weingart Exhibition, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 2003
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Hong Kong Design Institute Weingart: Typography 2015
Museum fĂźr Gestaltung ZĂźrich Weingart: Typograpghy 2014
Franc and I spoke for quite some time, and I figured it would be best to end this section of the publication with something that he said about how design can be related to geography, and where the soul of design in general comes from.
Franc: Look at the design on the West Coast, from California. It comes from the landscape. A place where the landscape is different, you design differently, you think differently. Sometimes you live in compact areas, but that’s what you express, without even thinking about it. It’s almost a language, you learn how to speak a certain way because of some norms and traditions and ways of doing things. And then you go to a different place and you have a different way of looking at things. So one thing that [Weingart] taught me was that there was such wonderful latitude and democracy in thinking, and answering questions. Of course it always depends on having a strong set of principles, that’s the foundation that you have to have to build anything significant on top of it.
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Tam, Keith. “Wolfgang Weingart’s Typographic Landscape.” 2+3D issue i-2003, Nr. 6: pg. 1-8. Weingart, Wolfgang. “My Typography Instruction at the Basle School of Design/Switzerland, 1968 to 1985.” Design Quarterly 130 (1985): 1-20. Print. Weingart, Wolfgang. Typography: My Way to Typography. Baden, Switzerland: Lars Muller, 2000. Print. Weingart Typography. Zurich: Zurich U of the Arts, 2014. Print. http://www. museum-gestaltung.ch/en/exhibitions/review/2014/weingart-typography/
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Mark Roble
Corcoran College of Art & Design
at The George Washington University
Graphic Design BFA Thesis 2017