Wolfgang Weingart Research

Born in Germany in 1941, Wolfgang Weingart is the father of New Wave Typography (or Swiss Punk Typography). In 1958 Weingart enrolled at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart where he studied graphic arts and developed skills in linocut, woodblock printing and typesetting. His first design job was a three-year apprentiship at Ruwe Printing, where he learned typesetting in hot metal hand composition. Weingart says his time here still has a big influence on the work he produces today. Here he met Emil Ruder and Armin Hoffman, and relocated with them to Basel in 1963 where he attended the Basel School of Design.

In 1968, he was requested to teach typography at the institution’s newly established department Weiterbildungsklasse für Grafik and went on to accept a teaching position at the Yale Summer Program in Graphic Design in Brissago, Switzerland, upon Armin Hofmann’s request. “I went to Basle because of Emil Ruder and Armin Hofmann, but I was quickly disappointed. Hofmann went off on a one-year sabbatical, and I had the feeling I wasn’t learning anything with Ruder.”

For over four decades Weingart has extensively taught and delivered lectures across Europe, Asia, New Zealand, North and South America, and Australia. According to him, he never influenced his students to adopt a certain type of style, especially his own. However, his students misunderstood his teaching as his own style and spread it around as ‘Weingart style’. According to Weingart, "I took 'Swiss Typography' as my starting point, but then I blew it apart, never forcing any style upon my students. 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."

From 1978 to 1999, Wolfgang Weingart served as the member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale, A group that Max Huber was also a part of in 1958. Weingart also contributed to the the editorial board of the magazine, Typographische Monatsblätter, for eighteen long years, A publication that Dan Friedman and Emil Ruder also contributed to. 

“In my opinion, most designers don’t think or develop anything for themselves any more. They just process fragments. The result is emotional chaos. Today students look to Emigre magazine for ideas. They find this chaos wildly attractive: they imitate it and think it’s modern.”

Weingart taught a new approach to typography that influenced the development of New Wave, Deconstruction and much of graphic design in the 1990s. While he would contest that what he taught was also Swiss Typography, since it developed naturally out of Switzerland, the style of typography that came from his students led to a new generation of designers that approached most design in an entirely different manner than traditional Swiss typography.

Weingart is known to have a rebellious mind-set and has liked to push the limits of what is considered as ‘the norm’ and from an early stage he broke the typographic rules by freeing letters from their restricting design grids. He spaced them, underlined them or reshaped them and reorganized type-setting. Weingart believed that the development of the Swiss Typography was becoming stagnant as it was sterile and anonymous, as Swiss style emphasizes on being neat and eye-catching, and on its readability and objectivity. It is also identified for its immense simplicity and exhortation to beauty and purpose. These two principles are achieved by using asymmetric layouts, grids, sans-serif typefaces, left-flushes and simple but effective photography. These elements are produced in a simple but highly logical, structured, stiff and harmonious manner.

 His goal was to breathe new life into the teaching of new typography. He believed that the only way to break typographic rules was to know them; an advantage he gained from his apprenticeship.