Graphic designer and typographer Wolfgang Weingart challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of Swiss International Style design, infusing his work with expressive typography and defying the strict grids and hierarchies of his predecessors. Trained as a typesetter in his native Germany, Weingart developed a deep understanding of the materials and craft of printing, allowing him to experiment with composition and letter spacing directly on the press. He would later apply this methodology to new technologies such as phototypesetting, working out every detail for the printer in order to create a distinctive, nuanced aesthetic. He developed a complex technique of hand-layering screens that emphasized the building blocks of offset imagery – lithographic half-tone dot and overlapping moiré patterns – as graphic elements, rather than creating the illusion of a perfect, uniform surface. In posters such as this one, Weingart complicated the picture plane by overlapping the pattern and text, creating a sense of depth throughout the composition.Though Weingart’s distorted texts and dense collages stirred controversy in the design world, he maintained the respect of his modernist colleagues at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel in Switzerland. His experiments are considered an important precursor to digital design.
Staci Steinberger, Associate Curator, Decorative Arts and Design, 2021
