RIP Wolfgang Weingart, a designer's designer

July 17, 2021 10:28 AM

RIP Wolfgang Weingart, a designer's designer

"Wolfgang Weingart (born 1941, died on 12 July 2021) 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." (Wikipedia.org)

How Can One (Re)make Swiss Typography? (2014)

Museum of Design Zurich Unveils the Wolfgang Weingart Archive: Meet the man who shattered the Swiss type mold (2015)

posted by xtian (7 comments total)

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posted by chance at 11:11 AM on July 17, 2021

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posted by JoeXIII007 at 11:47 AM on July 17, 2021

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posted by Thorzdad at 1:20 PM on July 17, 2021

Weingart was in the pantheon when I was in design school. Never got to see much of his work during my time in school but it was really mind-blowing to go through an entire plodding semester pushing around a letter or two of Univers and then see what he could do with the same materials.
posted by ardgedee at 1:43 PM on July 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

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posted by bz at 4:21 PM on July 17, 2021

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The young teachers in my school looked at the Emigre crowd. The older teachers praised Swiss design from the likes of Hoffman. Weingart was a compromise. Haha.
posted by xtian at 4:40 PM on July 17, 2021

I arrived in design school in 1975 in the wake of his legendary US lecture tour. I remember seeing some of his posters and having absolutely no idea what to make of it all. (I was there to design clever logos and cool album covers, not whatever...weird thing this guy in Basel was doing.) And of course when I graduated five years later my entire portfolio was one big Weingart knockoff.
posted by How the runs scored at 6:13 AM on July 18, 2021 [2 favorites]