Essay: Wolfgang Weingart

Wolfgang Weingart was born in Salem Valley, Germany in 1941. His family knew very little of the arts, yet he still found himself interested as a child in his early teens. His interest sprouted from typography studies he conducted as an apprentice in Stuggart. Working with a professional hand typesetter encouraged his commitment to learning typefaces. Although he was very meticulous in understanding the mechanics behind type, he studied typography at the Basel School of Design years later. It was at this school that he discovered his greatest influences and inspirations. His most noteworthy teachers were Armin Hoffman, and Emil Ruder, the two that introduced Swiss typography - also known as international style - to him. Much of his art created demonstrates their influence in various ways. in 1868 Weingart went on to teach at Basil with an approach he describes as being more about the "process of learning " as opposed to the "philosophy of teaching."

As the decades passed, the International Style began to show its age, and Weingart began to work on new ideas post-modernist approaches, creating his own personal version of swiss typography, "New-Wave Typography."

As an artist, he was more concerned about the quality of the type itself while maintaining its purpose, as opposed to one or the other. He prided himself in striving to make the viewer aware of the painstaking care and consideration put into each design. His work within International Style typography was supported by a belief that "all typography should be unobtrusive and transparent in order to clearly communicate the design's message." In short, he wanted his type to be noteworthy as well as serve its function well.

Beyond teaching at the Basel School of Design from 1968 onward, he has taught at a number of other schools across the world in the last 30 years. These include Yale's summer design programs from 1974 - 1996. His work has been in countless exhibits and galleries the world over. Some of his art has been adopted into permanent displays in the world. His work within typography has earned several design award from the Swiss Government. In 2000, he published "My Way to Typography," a monologue that provides an in-depth look into his life, work and influences. He goes on to mention some of the things he misses from his childhood, and his take on the current state of graphic design as an art-form. In addition to everything else, he received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from MassArt in May 2005.

Although he is known to use color as well as texture in some of his images, the works that attracted me the most to his style of typography is within his "Typography Process Series" In particular, nr 4 (Typographic Signs) and nr 5 (Typography as a Painting) are my favorites. He manages to take the characters entirely out of their usual context, instead creating forms that work more as objects within an environment. It inspired me to create my typographic experiment, working as he did with black and white, although also implementing textures as he sometimes does in his work. Where he would take words in these "Process" works and re-contextualize them, I intended to take characters from our alphabet, constructing objects and forms that are familiar to us. That said, his breadth and range of typographic styles is really inspiring. He works in any color scheme, with any layout , and still makes it easy to read without being too simplistic or complex.

*links to his work*

(Typography Process Series)
http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=6289

(More color and texture)
http://balladora.blogspot.com/2007/03/wolfgang-weingart-works.html

(My direct influence)
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A6289&page_number=3&template_id=1&sort_order=1

http://www.jameskurtz.com/2009/04/03/graphic-design-legends-and-rockstars-wolfgang-weingart/