Wolfgang Weingart is one of the iconic swiss designers known as the pioneer of ‘New Wave’ or Swiss Punk typography.
To understand how he had developed the style known as Swiss Punk, we need to go back to the beginning of Weingart’s career in design. Weingart first started to take a step in the design world in April 1958 when he returned to Germany to attend a two-year program of applied graphic arts at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart. In those years, he had learned the fundamentals of typography, such as typesetting, linocut, and woodblock printing. However, the actual turning point of his life happened while he continued an apprenticeship at Ruwe Printing because he was able to discover a style called “Swiss Style”. The discovery of the International style was a start, but he was not consumed by it. In other words, after years of teaching and conducting numerous experiments with his students, he later found a way to create a new style called Swiss Punk by eliminating the strict elements of the Swiss-style as well as incorporated with his playful style.
Weingart is indeed one of the special designers that had become successful because he was not afraid of breaking the rules of graphic design. Later when he became an instructor at Basel School of Design, Weingart had tried to teach the new generations of designers to take a more adventurous path toward design because he believes in the limitless creativity that this career offers.