Wolfgang Weingart

Wolfgang Weingart is an internationally known graphic designer and typographer. His work is categorized as Swiss typography and he is credited as "the father" of New Wave or Swiss Punk typography.

Weingart then completed a three-year typesetting apprenticeship in hot metal hand composition at Ruwe Printing. There he came into contact with the company’s consulting designer, Karl-August Hanke, who became his mentor and encouraged him to study in Switzerland.

‘My work is like a quarry. People see a stone they like, appropriate it and work it until there’s nothing left.’ Eye talks to the father of New Wave typography.

Graphic Design

Weingart is a self taught Designer. He learned the craft of hot-metal typesetting as an apprentice. Since 1968 he has been an instructor of typography at the Basel Allegemeine Gewerbeschule. He also teaches typography annually at the Yale Summer Program in Graphic Design, Brissago Switzerland. In 1972 he published the important article "How Can One Make Swiss Typography?" which explores the theoretical and practical results of typographic design and discusses the educational application of these results, in Switzerland, from 1968 to 1972.

Weingart, 1941, trained typesetter. Since 1968 teacher for typography at the School of Design Basel - Switzerland. At the center-point of his work Stands the experimentation with typography. During the past fifteen years his typography has been printed in technical journals and special supplements, and for many years he has been a co-worker with the 'Typographische Monatsblaetter', St. Gallen. He is founder of the special supplement in the same magazine, 'TMCommunication. In 1969 a comprehensive survey of his work was exhibited by the gallery Knauer -Expo Stuttgart. In 1973 by the Woods-Gerry Gallery, Providence - RIUSA. Important pieces of work include a portfolio of 11 typographical text interpretations

Swiss
Typography

“I was motivated to provoke this stodgy profession and to stretch the typeshop’s capabilities to the breaking point,” Weingart stated in the retrospective Weingart: Typography—My Way to Typography, published by Lars Müller in 2000. He went on to describe the experimental mood of the era: “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.”