A typographer, a graphic designer, a teacher, and nonetheless a rule-breaker by heart that is the father of New Wave typography. Wolfgang Weingart was a successful rebel who throughout his years, with a curious, playful, and creative mind found his way to greatness. Who taught others that rules do not need to be followed in design. This essay is focused on his journey throughout his rebellious life, through curiosity and accidents, becoming a master and a teacher.

Weingart was born in February 1941, near the Swiss border in southern Germany, Salem Valley. He grew up during the end of the second world war. According to Weingart himself, his childhood was the most important part of his life, even though it was at the end of a prolonged war, it was at this time that he realized that he was more of a doer than a thinker due to his creative nature growing up. From making toys and sculptures of material collected from devices from the war to making a battery-driven device to cheat his way through school.

“I have come to understand how the earliest years of life are the most decisive ones for individual and professional development. They are made of the dreams and feelings only a child can experience.”
-Weingart, Wolfgang

Weingart didn’t spend his entire youth in Germany, in April 1954, he moved to Lisbon, Portugal for two years with his parents, where he was given a cultural and visual education, which was the beginning of his enchantment with the Arabian culture which would appear in his designs later on. During his time at the German school in Portugal, his teacher then recognized his artistic talent and gave him private lessons at their home. After his family's 4 year absence from Germany, in 1958, they chose to return.

Weingart was already a rule breaker from an early age, but not in an artistic way like he was later on. From stealing money from his mother’s purse at the age of seven to lying and cheating his way through school.

During his early school years, Weingart wasn’t known to be the most ideal student, due to his cheating and untruthful ways of getting around passing classes, staying down a year three times, Weingart was never fond of the typical education given to him. The idea of cramming information into his head didn’t appeal to him. With various methods, he cheated his way through his exams, creating creative solutions to help him pass. He was less afraid of getting caught cheating and lying than failing classes, rather than getting corporal punishment. This is why he took to these methods passing classes.

He created at one point a battery-driven device that would tell him the anticipated answers for the essay that he wrote and placed it into the same device the night before. Another way he cheated through his exams was by drilling holes into his school desk, making him able to read the answers through the drilled holes for the tests.

His solace from his anxiety due to school was an old girl’s bike, his Göppel, that he customized in various ways. Using his hands to take the bike apart, putting it together again, and customizing it taught Weingart more than what his teachers did, according to himself.

“I learned through my hands and made an important discovery: the intellect can be expressed and cultivated through handwork."
-Weingart, Wolfgang

His artistic journey had only just begun during his childhood, discovering himself through experimenting, as well as accidents. Crashing his bike into a wire fence, young Weingart proceeded to take apart the fence and create with it, making outlines of objects, creating an impulse for him to make pictures out of it. Which is when he became aware of his interest in visual design.

Whenever Weingart had returned to Germany, he chose to enroll in the Merz Academy in Stuttgart, where he attended a two-year program in graphic arts. During these two years at Merz Academy, he developed certain skills including typesetting, linocut, and woodblock printing.

After his time at Merx Academy, Weingart began his typesetting apprenticeship in hot metal hand composition at Ruwe Printing, where he came into contact with the designer Karl-August Hanke, who was the consulting designer of the company. Hanke became Weingart’s mentor, encouraging him to continue his studies in Switzerland.

At the beginning of his three-year typesetting apprenticeship, Weingart became fascinated with Swiss typography and graphic design. In 1963, he arranged a visit to Basel, to meet with Armin Hofmann with hopes of getting accepted into the Basel School of Design. In a turn of events, during the interview when Weingart was showing Hofmann his works, he was asked if he would consider teaching in his Graphics design program. A year later Weingart moved to Basel and enrolled in the school as an independent student.

During his three-year apprenticeship at Ruwe Printing, Weingart dropped a type case full of 6-point Berthold's Akzidenz-Grotesk on the floor. Weingart on the other hand, realized that it would take him days to sort them back into the wooden case and decided to turn the incident into a fun little adventure, making a circle out of the letters that had fallen, held together with a piece of cardboard. With both sides of the foot having surfaces you could print with, creating the first ‘Round Compositions’. This lucky accident encouraged Weingart to continue to further experiment with the Round compositions, playing around to create a gradient print.

Due to technology advancing, Weingart was given the opportunity to experiment further with new media, such as photomechanical reproduction. Playing with layering multiple film screens, overlapping them to create different patterns of angled movements and structures, opening a new world of expression and experimentation for him. The research he got from experimenting and playing around with this, was later applied to his later poster projects, using transparent films and self-made screens to create them.

“Rarely did I attempt to implement preconceived ideas; instead I navigated the process toward a result, which often led to unimaginable discoveries.”
-Weingart, Wolfgang

Weingart’s experiments with type and form took many shapes and were due to curiosity. At one point, during his apprenticeship at Ruwe Printing in 1962, he chose to experiment with the letter M. Since the type shop didn’t have letters in the desired size, he took it into his own hands to produce his own. By making his own letters, Weingart saw more than letters in their shape, instead of what they could be in terms of form. This opened a whole new world of opportunities creating with graphics and typography.

There was no limit for Weingart’s curiosity as well as creativity, using line tools and leftover material to bend and create shapes to imitate the shape of a landscape or architecture. He saw opportunities in tools that were used for one thing only to create shapes and patterns. Such as one of his pieces where he used the different sizes of line tools used in typography to make a gradient system, using the thickness of the lines.

In April of 1968, Weingart was invited to become a teacher at the Weiterbildungsklasser für Graphik, which he accepted. At this point, Weingart had many years with typography behind him, Swiss Typography, according to himself, had become sterile and anonymous. His vision was to “breathe new life into the teaching of typography”. He proceeded to assign his students to break the typographic rules and experiment with them, limited so that they could still read the text. Weingart helped others to understand the artistic importance of breaking the rules that were once set, an active rebellion on the Swiss typography.

“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.”
-Weingart, Wolfgang

After some hardship, feeling too repetitive in his work, Weingart made a breakthrough in the early ’70s, creating as we know it today, “New Wave” or “Swiss Punk Typography” after experimenting with photomechanics and lithography. Creating a new style, using scraps of different materials to create abstract collages into a “weaving of fragmented dreams”. It’s a style that represents him in many aspects. During an interview, Weingart admits to not being fond of the typical typography, as well as Swiss Typography and its rules, never using the grid system, since it “forces him into a cage” which can be seen in his designs. Not giving him the creative freedom of moving the type around as he wishes. Which reflects the rebel in Wolfgang Weingart.