Biography of wolfgang weingart design
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WOLFGANG WEINGART
“What's the use of being legible, when nothing inspires you to take notice of it?”
-Wolfgang Weingart
Introduction
Wolfgang Weingart is an internationally known graphic designer and typographer who is regarded as the “enfant terrible” of modern Swiss typography. He is credited with developing the ‘New Wave’ typography in the early 1970s which is also dubbed as ‘Swiss Punk’. Weingart is also famous for his experimental and expressive work that broke the mould of classical Swiss typography.
Childhood
Wolfgang Weingart was born in February 1941 in a valley near Lake Constance, the Salem Valley, in Germany close to the Swiss border. Wolfgang describes this as “the most important time of his life”.
Late in 1947 Weingart started primary school, it was around this time, after manipulating a piece of wire to form images such as the outlines of a house, a motorbike and a landscape, that he became aware of his interest in the area of visual design.
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Why do you think the Swiss became the de-facto developers of 'modernist' visual communication?
Well I am not Swiss, I am German, but have lived in Switzerland for 40 years. I think it has something to do with the Second World War. Germany couldn’t develop design thinking after the Bauhaus closed, and of course the Swiss could, because they remained neutral in the war. In fact they had time in the 30's and 40's not only to develop typography, but also many other disciplines. After the war, Germany had to repair itself before it could think about what to do with the legacy of the Bauhaus. Switzerland is a small country, and sometimes when you have a small country with a few great personalities, interesting things can happen. i am talking about people like Max Bill, who studied at the Bauhaus, and Anton Stankowski, who was at the Folkwangschule in the 20s. Both were very influential designers, although history has largely forgotten Stankowski. He came from Germany where he had been
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Wolfgang Weingart
German graphic designer (1941–2021)
Wolfgang Weingart | |
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Wolfgang Weingart in the vineyards of Tüllingen, Germany, 2011 | |
| Born | Wolfgang Weingart (1941-02-06)6 February 1941 Salem Valley, Germany |
| Died | 12 July 2021(2021-07-12) (aged 80) Basel, Switzerland |
| Nationality | German |
| Known for | Typography and Graphic Design |
| Movement | New Wave and Swiss Punk typography |
Wolfgang Weingart (6 February 1941 – 12 July 2021) was an internationally known graphic designer and typographer. His work was categorized as Swiss typography and he was credited as "the father" of New Wave or Swiss Punk typography.
Childhood
[edit]Weingart was born near the Swiss border of Germany, in the Salem Valley,[1][2] in 1941. He lived near Lake Constance for about thirteen years[3] and spent his childhood in Germany, moving to Lisbon in 1954 with his family.
Education
[edit]In April 1958 he returned to Germany and be