Graphic Design Theory : Readings From the Field

Building on Success | 77

wolfgang weIngart turned a reBellIous eye to swIss ratIonal typography,

rescuIng It froM what he descrIB es as “the threshold of stagnatIon.” While

studying under the Swiss masters, Armin Hofman and Emil Ruder at the Künstgewerbeschule in Basel

in the 1960s, Weingart reacted to existing standards by pushing typography to the limits of legibility

and beyond. He narrowly escaped expulsion. Combining extreme letterspacing, slant, weight, size, and

repetition with a fierce practical knowledge of printing, Weingart dismantled the rational methodology

of his elders. Out of this radicality emerged a design movement appropriate to the changing postmodern

times. New Wave was born. Weingart and the students he later taught at the Künstgewerbeschule in the

sixties, seventies, and eighties, including April Greiman and Dan Friedman, used their intimate knowledge

of Swiss modernism to open its unrelenting structure to the dynamic experiments of a new era. His

audacity urges us to look deeply at our own time and, in so doing, “to question established typography

standards, change the rules, and to reevaluate its potential.”^1

My way to typography

wolfgang weIngart | 2000

fourth Independent pro Ject: letters and typographIc

eleMents In a new context

In an era when lead type was virtually obsolete, the environment of a

traditionally equipped type shop—its elements and tools in metal, wood,

or synthetic materials—was the context, in fact, the impetus that enabled

me to develop a progressive curriculum for the Künstgewerbeschule Basel.

Swiss typography in general, and the typography of the Basel school in

particular, played an important international role from the fifties until the

end of the sixties. Its development, however, was on the threshold of stagna-

tion; it became sterile and anonymous. My vision, fundamentally compatible

with our school’s philosophy, was to breathe new life into the teaching of

typography by reexamining the assumed principles of its current practice.

The only way to break typographic rules was to know them. I acquired

this advantage during my apprenticeship as I became expert in letterpress

printing. I assigned my students exercises that not only addressed basic

design relationships with type placement, size, and weight, but also

encouraged them to critically analyze letterspacing to experiment with

the limits of readability.

1 Wolfgang Weingart, My Way to
Typography, trans. Katherine
Wolff and Catherine Schelbert
(Baden: Lars Müller, 2000), 112.