Visualizing Information Space My Way to Typography, Wolfgang Weingart
Jessamyn Miller Design Studio I School of Design Carnegie Mellon University Fall 2010
Visualizing Information Space The Design Studio course assignment was to visualize the information in Wolfgang Weingart’s book, “My Way to Typography” as a large-format poster. This exercise required the use of visual hierarchy to present a large amount of content in a small space.
My Way to Typography, cover
The Ten Sections, tabbed for reference
Image notes, two-page spread
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Visualizing Information Space
About the book Published in 2000, the 521 page book details Weingart’s exploration in the field of typography from the 1940’s to the 1980’s, with particular focus on the 1960’s. He describes his creative influences, ranging from childhood memory, travel through the Middle East, and early mentors from his typography apprenticeship in Stuttgart, Germany and the Kunstgewerbeschule art school in Basel, Switzerland. As a child, Weingart was curious about the mechanics of his bicycle, his mother’s horse and cart, and the wood-burning automobiles of the Duke of Baden. He loved to build little machines like noisemakers and crib-sheet cheating devices. He brought this curiosity to his creative experiments as a typesetter, pushing the boundaries of traditional German and Swiss typography. Both a student and a teacher at the Basel school, Weingart spent countless hours in the type shop printing his compositions made from lead type, bars, linoleum cuts and, later, photo and lithographic films and paper collage. The book is structured into ten sections, addressing Weingart’s biography, his personal projects and his public work. The sections are somewhat chronological within themselves, but the book revisits significant time periods in order to focus on relationships, memories, and special techniques.
An image of Damascus rooftops and round compositions with lead type. Many of the book’s photographs are cropped to a circle.
Jessamyn Miller
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Initial concepts Early ideas yielded organization based on technologies Weingart used, his influences, his experiments and the works they produced.
I had the most difficulty with integrating the chapter titles with images to cover the broad range of his work. I wanted to match images to each section of the book with small bits of narration so that the poster could be read easily.
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Visualizing Information Space
Finding meaning Leafing through the pages, I was drawn to Weingart’s photographs, handwriting samples and rough sketches. The story of Weingart’s struggles in school and memories of his mother captured my attention and made me feel connection to him as a real person. It was only much later that I began to understand the rationale behind the book’s nonlinear design. The story of his process was told through his influences, projects and memories. Weingart revisited the same periods of time to focus on moments of discovery that contributed to the overall development of his approach to typography. For example, Weingart created his first round compositions in the early 1960’s and continued to experiment into the 1990’s. The form of a circle compacted with small elements appears in photographs and prints. The reduction of forms by half-printing evolves into other type experiments where letters and shapes are blocked out or obscured, challenging legibility.
In this large-format sketch, I was able to chart out several areas of focus into five zones: about the book, places, page layouts, chapters, and inputs/ outputs. These areas of focus, while a bit crowded and messy, allowed me to show the aspects of the book I thought most important. This became the framework for the first draft of the poster.
Jessamyn Miller
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Visualizing Ten Ways to Typography To address the book’s structure, I listed three sections for chapters A-C (biography), chapters 1-6 (projects), and chapter 7 (practical application). Early on, I isolated the chapters as a block of text, thinking I would use images separately to demonstrate the process Weingart used and finished examples of his work. The division of the chapters didn’t completely make sense to me at first, so I ended up circumventing them instead of using them as a framework.
Travel Weingart travelled extensively, beginning in childhood. I decided to include this aspect of his life in the poster. For every city mentioned in the book, I added a point to a Google Map, below. This was problematic because the many of the cities were clustered and could not be viewed individually. A trip to the Middle East might mention five different destinations, including cities, deserts and villages. Later, I grouped the destinations by where he attended school, worked, traveled, and where he collaborated on projects. I discovered that while Weingart enjoyed long trips abroad, he stayed close to home for his professional life. I used the text of the city name, in combination with a color bar representing his relationship to the place.
A custom Google Map listing destinations mentioned in the book.
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Visualizing Information Space
Color I began to explore some aspects of Weingart’s graphic style in my visuals. Black lines divided text and color bars of yellow, orange and gray (a substitute for silver) filled empty white space or obscured parts of words. Toward the end of the book, Weingart realized that his favorite colors, yellow and orange, were tied to the memory of watching this flag fly during his childhood in the Salem Valley, Germany. The predominant colors of the book, however are white and black. Color does not appear in any of his photographs, or much of his work until he experiments with film and collage.
Modest amounts of yellow, orange and red highlight Weingart’s Didacta poster. This was the inspiration for the color palette of my poster.
The flag of the Kingdom of Baden. Similar colors are used on the cover of the book.
Swiss poster weltformat The poster is sized to the Swiss weltformat (world format), 90.5 x 128 cm. The standard was created in the early 20th century so that posters could be hung in town center display cases across Switzerland.
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First draft of the poster My Way to Typography Wolfgang Weingart The Ten Sections: My Way to Typography Die zehn Teile: Wege zur Typography A Discovery: The 40s, 50s and 60s
©2000 Lars Müller Publishers CH 5401 Baden/Switzerland English translation by Katharine Wolff, 520 pages
Asia
Los Angeles, California
Lisbon, Portugal
Beirut, Lebanon
Karachi, Pakistan
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Line Pictures
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Cordoba, Spain
Aleppo, Syria
Pushkar, India
New Haven, Connecticut
Granada, Spain
Palmyra, Syria
Nathdwara, India
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The Letter M
Kent, Ohio
Tetuán, Morrocco
Baalbek, Lebanon
Ahmedabad, India
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Typography in a New Context
New York, New York
Darmstadt, Germany
Damascus, Syria
Tokyo, Japan
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Typography as Endless Repetition
Stuttgart, Germany
Bosra, Syria
Ulm, Germany
Wadi Kelt
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Film techniques, Layering as Collage
Salem Valley, Germany
Judaean desert
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Practical Application
Basel, Switzerland
Jerusalem, Israel
Zurich, Switzerland
Halhul, Jordan
Athens, Greece
Giza, Egypt
Mykonos, Greece
Page Seite
Input Eingang
Page layouts used in the book. Heirarchy is defined by size. Landscapes are given the width of two pages. Details for consideration are isolated in shapes on fields of white. Text size begins large at the beginning of a chapter and ends small, as the story continues.
experiments
inspiration
technology
Bicycle noise machine Cheating devices L-hooks Bending metal Cutting paper Repetition Line screen/graduated gray tone screen
Travel Photography Handwriting Letter spacing Crossing out words Rejections from jobs, contests Bad grades in school Drawing Etching Woodcuts Painting
Lead type Letterpress Hand setting Lithography Wood type Photomechanical Dots screens Hot-metal typesetting Photolithography Photo-enlarger Transparent films/collage
A big idea:One column
Travel photograph: full page
collaboration Zusammenarbeit
Middle East
Round Compositions
work Arbeit
United States Europe
1
school Schule
Place Ort
C Insight: The Basel Years since 1964
travel Reisen
B Quest: Swiss Typography
Biography: Two column, the story continues
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Biography: One column, the story begins
Artwork: isolated for inspection
New chapter: one column
Notes page: descriptive image captions
discoveries
works produced
Line pictures Endless repetitions Letter M distortions Tonal moire patterns
Round compositions Letter as shape Film reproductions Minimizing legibility
Catalogs Books Posters Commissions
World format 36 in x 50 in Weltformat B4 90.5 cm x 128 cm | Jessamyn Miller | Graduate Design Studio I | Fall 2010 | School of Design | Carnegie Mellon University
Output Ausgang visual style
Visualizing Information Space
First critique I printed out my first draft of the poster in tiles and presented it to the class on October 18, 2010.
Nein! People were confused by several parts of the poster. “What was your intent?” one student asked. Some searched for meaning in the color bars next to the chapters. I had attempted to recreated a landscape technique Weingart used to present text, but it wasn’t for the purpose of relaying information. The poster’s grid didn’t allow for one dominant element to come forward, and left uneven white space between the two columns.
Ja! People were most intrigued by the input/output section, with images from the book and the lists of processes Weingart used. “This is the poster!” our instructor Dan Boyarski, said, pointing to input/output. After standing back and looking at the full weltformat-sized poster for the first time, I agreed that I wanted to focus on Weingart’s process, work, and influences, and make the other sections smaller. The travel section, a departure from the dimension of a map, was also more successful, as the color bars conveyed meaning.
The tiled poster presented at our first critique. The input/output and travel sections emerged as the most important pieces of information.
Jessamyn Miller
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Revisions Rediscovering the ten sections Dividing the poster space to represent Weingart’s influences, technologies and accomplishments became increasingly difficult. I experimented with grids, circles, lines to divide the space and fill it with images. After spending more time with the book, scanning, reading and looking for “milestone” images, I suddenly realized that I was reading Wolfgang Weingart’s own process book. Each section was a small growth in a particular direction. I created a new layout with the sections as the principle guide. Eventually, I went from ten sections to three, using the name of each section to define the space. In lieu of my own descriptions, I felt that using words from the book allowed Weingart’s voice to be heard.
New layout ideas: dividing the poster by sections, chapters, and using representative figures. I began to think of the parts of the book as creating a meaningful whole.
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Visualizing Information Space
Thumbnails I wanted the viewer to know Weingart’s story through images from the book. I built the poster around selected thumbnails, accompanied by his own captions. Grouped by section, the images appear in the same order that they do in the chapters. The small chunks of text help draw in the viewer with short but rewarding narratives. Dates give a sense of years of high activity, such as the mid 1960’s.
Around 1948
1950 to 1953
1954
1964
Me and Göppel, the first bicycle traded for an old children’s wagon.
Details of letters written to my mother.
Stone-vaulted archways in the market streets of Tetuán, Morocco.
One hundred L-hooks screwed into the wooden base, which were turned and twisted in every direction.
Quotes
Weingart was nobody’s darling, especially in the early years of his career. I enjoyed his tales of struggle as much as his triumphant discoveries. I decided to include three quotes which I felt revealed both Weingart’s character as a rebellious student and as an inspired typographer. Because Weingart is so well regarded as an eminent Swiss typographer, I decided to lead off with this humorous and ironic quote. “By the mid-sixties my irreverence for Swiss Typography had jeopardized my relationship to the Basel school. I had officially registered in the school with permission to stay for two years until spring of 1966, but Ruder was fed up with my troublemaking. I was stirring up a rebellion with a group of students by inviting controversial artists to give lectures: Hap Grieshaber was one of them. Ruder gave me the ultimatum: either I commit myself to a year-long project for the duration of my enrollment, or leave school by the next semester.”
Jessamyn Miller
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Travel Revisiting the list of places mentioned in the book, I eliminated the dimension of “continent” from the graphic. Instead, I grouped the destinations by color. What became immediately clear was the amount of time Weingart spent in the Middle East and thus its importance to his inspiration. His work collaborations reached to the U.S. and Japan, and he attended school in Germany, Lisbon and Switzerland, but he worked as a typographer solely in Stuttgart and Basel.
school
work
collaboration
travel
Basel, Switzerland
Darmstadt, Germany
Cordoba, Spain
Bosra, Syria
Stuttgart, Germany
Ulm, Germany
Granada, Spain
Wadi Kelt
Lisbon, Portugal
Zurich, Switzerland
Tetuán, Morocco
Judaean desert
Salem Valley, Germany
Mykonos, Greece
Athens, Greece
Jerusalem, Israel
Los Angeles, California
New York, New York
Halhul, Jordan
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Beirut, Lebanon
Giza, Egypt
New Haven, Connecticut
Aleppo, Syria
Karachi, Pakistan
Kent, Ohio
Palmyra, Syria
Pushkar, India
Tokyo, Japan
Baalbek, Lebanon
Nathdwara, India
Damascus, Syria
During his trips, Weingart often liked to take pictures from the window of the airplane. Inspired by the endlessness of desert dunes, he explored the repetition of endless typographic form in a personal project.
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Visualizing Information Space
The final poster Wege zur Typographie
My Way to Typography Wolfgang Weingart
©2000 Lars Müller Publishers Baden, Switzerland
school
“By the mid-sixties my irreverence for Swiss Typography had jeopardized my relationship to the Basel school. I had officially registered in the school with permission to stay for two years until spring of 1966, but Ruder was fed up with my troublemaking. I was stirring up a rebellion with a group of students by inviting controversial artists to give lectures: Hap Grieshaber was one of them. Ruder gave me the ultimatum: either I commit myself to a year-long project for the duration of my enrollment, or leave school by the next semester.”
work
collaboration
Basel, Switzerland
Darmstadt, Germany
“When I was at work setting type by hand, a childhood pleasure came back to me. Selecting the metal letters, composing them into words or lines, building paragraph blocks and pages, cleaning and returning the letters to their proper compartments in the type case after printing—this methodical procedure reminded me of how I used to remove and add parts to my bicycle.”
Ulm, Germany
Granada, Spain
Wadi Kelt
Lisbon, Portugal
Zurich, Switzerland
Tetuán, Morocco
Judaean desert Jerusalem, Israel
Salem Valley, Germany
Mykonos, Greece
Athens, Greece
Los Angeles, California
New York, New York
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Beirut, Lebanon
Giza, Egypt
New Haven, Connecticut
Aleppo, Syria
Karachi, Pakistan
Kent, Ohio
Palmyra, Syria
Pushkar, India
Tokyo, Japan
Baalbek, Lebanon
Nathdwara, India
Typecase in the Paper and Printing Museum of Basel.
Entdecken, Suchen, Finden
Quest: Swiss Typography
Around 1948 Me and Göppel, the first bicycle traded for an old children’s wagon.
1950 to 1953 Details of letters written to my mother.
Insight: The Basel Years since 1964
1954 Stone-vaulted archways in the market streets of Tetuán, Morocco.
1964 One hundred L-hooks screwed into the wooden base, which were turned and twisted in every direction.
1969 Curved lines were secured for printing by unusual means, anchored in plaster or pinned into position by adhesive lead blocks, magnets, or standard type furniture.
The underside of a metal letter showing its groove and feet from the casting mold. These bottom ‘tracks’ left a printed impression that looked like an equal sign.
The Letter M
1990 Round Compositions. Bottom side.
Typography in a New Context
1964 Sketchbook drawing.
1964 Line Pictures. Composed with handset rules of different lengths and widths.
Typography as Endless Repetition Film Techniques, Layering as Collage
1965 M-cube with a print of the letter glued to each of its six sides.
1971 Im Readable letters composed of type elements. Set in Ruder’s poster typeface and semibold Berthold Akzidenz-Grotesk.
Printed Materials and Covers Typographische Monatsblätter
Jessamyn Miller
Design
Jessamyn Miller
Assignment
Visualizing Information Space
Course
Design Studio I Fall 2010 School of Design Carnegie Mellon University
Size
Worldformat, 90.5 x 128 cm
Typeface
Univers
1979 Film layering. Cover for the Japanese trade journal, Idea number 156.
1969 Typographic pictures. Thoughts on typography designed for an exhibition in Stuttgart.
1966 Dry river valleys in the Syrian desert. Photography taken on a flight from Palmyra to Damascus.
Anwenden der Erfahrungen
Practical Application “In comparison to letterpress, the photolithographic process was more flexible because of its simplicity. Freed from the constraints of standard sizes and positionable anywhere on the film in any orientation, typography became unlimited and my work was enriched by this technique.”
1980 1970 to 1987 Color studies. Ads The typographic for a convention sign as a on teaching aids in fundamental theme. Basel, 18 th Didacta/ Eurodidac.
Selbstgestellte Aufgaben
Line Pictures
1966 Ancient section in the city of Damascus. Photographyed on a return flight from Palmyra.
Halhul, Jordan
Damascus, Syria
Independent Projects Round Compositions
Bosra, Syria
Stuttgart, Germany
Discovery, Quest, Insight Discovery: The 40s, 50s, and 60s
travel Cordoba, Spain
1970 Handset type. ‘Seeing, Reading, and Learning’ cover series for fourteen issues of TM, published in the years 1972 and 1973.
Catalogue and Book Design
1975 Handset type. Poster for a student at Kent State University announcing an exhibition of his photography.
Swiss Industries Fair Basel
1979 Film layering. Worldformat poster for the city organisation in support of the arts: ‘Kunstkredit Basel 1982/83’
Selected Posters
1981 Film layering. Worldformat poster for the Kunstgewerbemuseum Zürich: ‘Schreibkunst’
1980/81 Film layering. Woldformat poster for the convention on teaching aids: ‘18 th Didacta/ Eurodidac’
1982 Film layering. Worldformat poster for the publisher Birkhauser: ‘The Swiss Poster 1900-1983’ (Blue version).
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Revisions and printing For the final composition, I concentrated on reducing “noise” in the typography. I eliminated extraneous paragraph rules, aligned and re-sized all thumbnails and added more white space for breathing room between elements. Major headings were translated into German, representing the dual-language aspect of the book. The poster used a vertical hierarchy, followed by a horizontal one. The vertical hierarchy begins with the book title and cover, a quote, and the travel infographic. It serves as a brief introduction to Wolfgang Weingart’s identity as the author. The subsequent three sections, “Discovery, Quest, Insight,” “Independent Projects,” and “Practical Application” group the chapters together from top to bottom. Within each section a series of images and captions is presented to be read left to right. The poster was printed at Copies at Carson in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania using satin finish paper. The Design Studio final critique was held on November 10, 2010.
Design Studio final critique
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Visualizing Information Space
Surprise! While working on this project, I applied for IMPAQT, the Carnegie Mellon program which fosters connections between students in Pittsburgh and Qatar. During the interview, I was asked why I wanted to visit Qatar. I described how my past travel experiences in Africa had shaped me and my creative work, and I was excited to explore a new part of the world. I mentioned my project on Wolfgang Weingart and his frequent trips to the Middle East, pulling a rough draft of the information poster from my backpack. When Weingart visited the ancient ruins of Palmyra, Syria, I explained, he saw forms and patterns which he photographed and sketched, then employed in his typography. It turns out, one of the interviewers was from Syria. She peered at the travel section and whispered, “I’ve been to Aleppo.” Three weeks later, I was asked to join the IMPAQT team. I was grateful to have had the Weingart poster to facilitate our conversation. Of all the impressions I have of Wolfgang Weingart, what I will most remember about him is his love of traveling and its role in the aesthetic of his work.
The poster displayed in the Margaret Morrison building
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Visualizing Information Space
My Way to Typography, Wolfgang Weingart