Wolfgang Weingart

1. What it is — the cover of a trade journal, first in a series of fifteen (1972–73). Hand-set lead type in the school's composing room, letterpress (TM Research Archive: "hand-composition and film materials"). Quarto, about 23 × 30 cm. The covers are conceived as "covers for learning": each poses a question — what is typography, what is communication, what is text.
2. Composition — a grey field, in the top left corner a small "1", below it the words "Typographie / realisiert / Sprache" in three lines, large, so that the left edge of the words sits on the left margin and the right edge runs out to the right. To the right of the block a narrow column of small text (the journal's name, issue numbers), below it another paragraph of small-size type. The eye enters the large word, falls onto the small column on the right, returns down to the paragraph. There is no grid to tie these three elements together — Letterform Archive: "operate outside the bounds of the conventional grid system", "imbalanced asymmetries". The 5/1972 cover goes further: a centred definition of the word SPRACHE in five to six lines, each line in a different typeface/cut, with underlines beneath individual words (screenshot).
3. Colour — one: black on grey paper (1/1972), black on white (5/1972). Colour is not the subject; the subject is the weight of the type.
4. Typography — Akzidenz-Grotesk, confirmed (Letterform Archive) — a nineteenth-century typeface that TM had abandoned in favour of Univers; here it returns as a gesture. "Conspicuous variety of line weights": several typefaces/cuts within a single sentence, a word changing weight mid-line (5/1972: "SPRACHE:" bold, "Ein sozial-" light, "institutionalisiertes" bold). An underline beneath a word as in handwriting.
5. Message — at three seconds: a large German word, scholarly tone, grey. From five metres: a journal for printers. The real message is for the trade: a cover that does not itself follow the rules it preaches inside. Tschichold read it exactly right.
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint is lead: type can be spaced out, underlined, mixed in typeface/cut, but not overlapped. That is why the 1972–73 covers are still "typographic" in the narrower sense — everything is done in the composing room, without film. Later, on film, the same attitude gains layers.
7. What would kill it — one typeface/cut instead of five. With one cut this is a clean Swiss cover, just placed a little awkwardly — Büchler without Büchler.

Principi: Legibility at the edge One typeface, wide scale Stepped text as shape (5/1972) Provjeriti uz sliku: the exact shade of the grey ground (paper or printed?); whether 1/1972 shows more than one cut in the large word.

1. What it is — an educational poster from a series of five (Nr 1–5, 1971–74), lithograph, 87.6 × 61.6 cm, printer G. Gissler, Basel (MoMA, for Nr 1, 3, 5; for Nr 2 MoMA does not list the printer, but the format and acquisition fund 264.2002 are the same). The series was made alongside the Typographic Process supplement in TM (from 1972). This is not a poster advertising something — it is a teaching panel that explains the method.
2. Composition — a cream sheet divided into a regular grid of smaller fields: top left a block of small text, top right a large "NR.2" with a superscript, below it 4 × 3 fields, each one exercise: "Cinema" with letterspaced letters, "STRAWINSKY", then four variants of "Printemps / Sacre" — words set at an angle, like rotated type, one on a black diagonal field; the last row four large letters G, T, F, D with black diagonal bands and lines running through them. It reads like a textbook page: line by line, left → right, from simple (a spaced-out word) to complex (a letter cut by a diagonal). The grid is a frame for demonstration, not the poster's composition.
3. Colour — black on cream paper. Single colour, because the subject of the demonstration is the form of the type; colour would blur the variable.
4. Typography — a grotesque (sans serif) of the Akzidenz type (class; not confirmed for this sheet). All the exercises use the same typeface in several weights — the typeface is the constant, what changes is spacing, angle, background, cut. This is exactly what he says about the method: "basic design relationships with type placement, size, and weight" (My Way to Typography).
5. Message — at three seconds: a board with letters. From five metres: just "NR.2". The message is not for the passer-by but for the student who stops in front and reads — the poster as a lesson on the classroom wall.
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint is pedagogical: the PROCEDURE needs to be shown, so it has to be broken down into steps someone else can repeat. Hence the grid of fields: each field is one step, one changed variable. The Nr 1–5 series is the same principle across five themes (organised text structures, from simple to complex, calendar structures, typographic marks, typography as painting).
7. What would kill it — merging the fields into a single composition. Then the poster looks like Weingart, and the lesson disappears — and the lesson is the only content.

Principles: Program instead of artefact One variable to failure To verify against the image: which typefaces/cuts exactly are in the "Cinema" field; whether the diagonal bands in the last row are printed or the letter is physically cut (film).

1. What it is — fifth sheet of the series, lithograph, 87.6 × 61.6 cm, printer G. Gissler Basel, MoMA 264.2002.5. Title in brackets: typography as (painting) — the brackets are Weingart's own hedge.
2. Composition — same top block as on Nr 2 (small text left, "NR.5" right). Below there is no field grid but one large free composition: the word "T E E" large, spaced across more than half the width; "ZüRICH" with letters of different sizes, ü dropped down; black horizontal bands through the middle of the sheet, circles on one of them like the end of a line; two "staircases" — blocks climbing in steps from left and right toward the centre, like stylized pyramids; below, "Lugano" and "COMO" with letters dropped diagonally, below them bands repeating the steps. The eye enters through "T E E", slides along the black band to "ZüRICH", falls down the stairs to "Lugano/COMO". The composition is a journey — Zürich, Lugano, Como are stations, the stairs are the Alps. Not confirmed by the literature. This is a reading of the work.
3. Colour — black on cream paper; "painting" without colour, only tonal masses of black type. The black bands are the darkest tone, the spaced letters the lightest: a range from solid field to the grey of letters on paper.
4. Typography — Akzidenz-type grotesque (sans serif) (unconfirmed). Three treatments of the same typeface: letterspacing up to +200 (T E E), mixed sizes within one word (ZüRICH), letter as black mass (the stairs are in fact typeset matter: lines and squares from the composing case). This follows directly from the discovery that increased spacing turns a word into a graphic form — "understanding the message was less dependent upon reading than we had supposed" (My Way to Typography).
5. Message — at three seconds: a black-and-white abstraction, perhaps a landscape. From five metres: stairs and bands, the words disappear. The message: typographic material — lead, lines, squares — can PAINT, and without an image. That is the thesis of the whole sheet.
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint: only what fits in the composing case. No photography, no drawing. The stairs are probably set from line material (Letterform: already in Stuttgart "distorting existing metal type blocks to create new letterforms and modular motifs"). Hence no curves except the circles.
7. What would kill it — adding a photograph of the Alps. Then the stairs become an illustration of a mountain and the whole thesis (typography AS painting, not alongside painting) collapses.

Principles: Stepped text as shape Legibility at the edge One variable to failure To verify against the image: whether "T E E" is part of a word (TEE = tea? or the start of something); what's written in the small text top left — probably an explanation of the exercise; whether the staircases are type or film.

1. What it is — the December 1976 issue of TM dedicated to Weingart, with a feature on seven years of his work, in the series "Pioneers of Graphic Design". He chooses the paper, colour, layout and plates (TM Research Archive: "I made all the decisions"). Technique: offset from an assembly of photographic film — Letterform Archive explicitly: "produced entirely through the complex layering of photographic films".
2. Composition — the cover (available in a small reproduction): on the left a white block of dense text with the title "Ist diese Typografie noch zu retten?" (can this typography still be saved?), on the right a photomontage: a woman's face, a mechanical wheel/lens, overlapping halftone fields, diagonal lines. The text and image are not split into two zones but overlap at the edge. Inner spreads (Letterform): spaced-out letters, shifted images, thick black text frames and a broken grid OVER a photograph of a desert; fragments of text fall apart on one page and reassemble on the next.
3. Colour — black and white with grey halftones; colour comes from the density of the screen, not from pigment. Syncopation on the 1976 cover: "irregular fields of reversed type on a dark background" — the negative as colour.
4. Typography — grotesque (sans serif). Not confirmed against the image. Syncopation: horizontal lines that "cross through the lines of text" — the line is no longer a frame but a participant in the setting. Letterform: "passages of heavily degraded type" — type photographed through the repro camera across several generations until the edges break down.
5. Message — at three seconds: chaos, a question in the title. From five metres: illegible, grey. The message is performative: the title asks whether this typography can be saved, and the cover answers that it does not want to be saved. Letterform: the feature "resists systematic interpretation", "less concerned with clarity than with cultivating an atmosphere".
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint is lifted: film allows overlap, negative, multiple exposure, degradation — everything that lead (work 01) did not allow. This issue is the first to put the whole of TM through the darkroom, and that is why it looks like what the computer will do ten years later (Letterform: "resembles the visual conventions later associated with digital design").
7. What would kill it — clean, sharp setting on the same layout. The degradation of the letters is the argument; without it, it is just a collage with a title.

Principles: Transparent layer as depth Grain and blur as shape To verify against the image: the whole cover in a larger reproduction (Letterform gallery "hi-fi captures"); who the woman in the photograph is; whether the desert spread is in the same issue or in the feature. Not verified against the image.

1. What it is — exhibition poster for the annual exhibition of the state art purchase fund (Staatlicher Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt) at Kunsthalle Basel, 7–30 May 1977. First of the series of Kunstkredit posters 1977–83 (plakatarchiv: seven sheets). Format 128 × 90.2 cm (B4); MoMA lists it as lithograph, LACMA as offset lithograph, plakatarchiv as offset, one colour. Gift of Clarisse Alcock Bronfman (MoMA 208.2006).
2. Composition — a vertical sheet, black and white, built from overlapping layers. At the top stands "KUNSTHALLE BASEL" in two lines, the second line larger and indented; below that "KUNSTKREDIT 1976/77" in negative, white on black, over a grey halftone; the subtitle sits in a black band. On the left is a column of small information (Öffnungszeiten). In the centre is a photograph of a lens or a mechanical wheel (to verify), behind it crumpled paper, top right a cross-shaped mark (to verify). Below stands "Ausstellung 7. bis 30. Mai 1977" and a photograph of the Kunsthalle façade cut diagonally; bottom left halftone stripes at an angle. Through all of it runs a mesh of thin black lines, which LACMA describes as "architectural fragments". The eye enters through the negative "KUNSTKREDIT", falls into the lens at centre, exits on the date below. LACMA: the poster "complicated the picture plane by overlapping the pattern and text, creating a sense of depth throughout the composition."
3. Colour — one colour, black, but in at least four tones: solid black, negative, fine halftone, coarse halftone. The tone is produced by the screen, not by pigment — hence LACMA: the poster uses "the building blocks of offset imagery — lithographic half-tone dot and overlapping moiré patterns — as graphic elements". An added colour would be excess here; the system of tones already exists in the screen.
4. Typography — Akzidenz-type grotesque (sans serif) (class, unconfirmed), in two registers: the large titles act as fields (also in negative), and the small text acts as texture in the column. The title "KUNSTKREDIT" is the largest element and the only one legible from a distance.
5. Message — at three seconds: a black-and-white layered image, the word KUNSTKREDIT. From five metres: only the negative title and the black band. The message is that the exhibition is not shown — no work of art appears on the poster — the poster offers itself as a work competing with the exhibition. Eye 4/1991 describes the halftone dot as a "self-sufficient graphic element".
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint is one colour and the B4 format. With one colour, depth has to be achieved by stacking screens at different angles on a light table — Eye on Design notes "stacked film layers inches high; over-exposed type via repro camera". The moiré is not a mistake, but a third tone born between two screens.
7. What would kill it — aligning the screens, same angle and same line screen. The moiré disappears, the depth disappears, leaving a neat black-and-white reproduction — looking like an unfinished sketch for a Hofmann poster.

Principles: Moiré as a deliberate layer Grain and blur as shape Transparent layer as depth To verify against the image: the identity of the object at the centre (camera lens? valve?); the mark top right; whether the poster is really one colour — the MoMA reproduction looks grey, while plakatarchiv states "Offset, einfarbig".

1. What it is — exhibition poster for the Kunstgewerbemuseum Zürich (Museum für Gestaltung), exhibition „Schreibkunst — Schulkunst und Volkskunst in der deutschsprachigen Schweiz 1548 bis 1980", 13 June – 30 August 1981, Ausstellungsstrasse 60 (data from the poster). LACMA: offset lithograph, 127.6 × 90.2 cm; plakatarchiv: offset, two colours. Pinterest/auctions list the Swiss Poster Award 1981; not confirmed by a primary source.
2. Composition — vertical sheet; the top third holds a photograph of a steel pen writing a signature (handwriting at an angle), the pen is the largest single shape and enters diagonally from the upper right; below it „KUNST / GEWERBE / MUSEUM / ZÜRICH" in four lines, letterspaced, left-aligned, with black bands of dates to the right („13. Juni – 30. August 1981", „Ausstellungsstrasse 60"); „Museum für Gestaltung" in a black band; then „Schreibkunst." large in a grey field, subtitle in three lines; at the bottom the opening hours in a black band. All of this sits on a base of geometric planes: triangles, zigzag bands along the left and bottom edges as a jagged frame, halftones and stripes breaking along the diagonal. The lightning-bolt shape (zigzag) to the right of „Schreibkunst" repeats the pen's stroke. The eye moves: pen → museum name (steps left) → Schreibkunst → dates. TGDS describes the calligraphic sample over the grid-set type as an example of extreme scale contrast — the grid and historical calligraphy are not opposed but cumulative.
3. Colour — cannot be determined from the LACMA reproduction (black-and-white photograph); plakatarchiv lists two colours. Not verified against the image what the second colour is and where it sits.
4. Typography — grotesque (sans serif), unconfirmed. The museum name letterspaced to the point where the four words become four equal bands — typography as structure, not as a sentence. Against this, the pen's handwriting: the only "real" mark of writing on a poster about the art of writing is photographed, not set.
5. Message — at three seconds: the pen and the word Schreibkunst. At five metres: the pen, the zigzag, the black bands. The message is witty: a poster about school handwriting in Switzerland made with means that are the opposite of handwriting (halftone, film, grotesque) — with handwriting let in only as an image. The trade (typographers) reads this as a stance; the public sees the pen.
6. Why exactly this way — the subject is historical (1548–1980), so the temptation was to make an "old" poster. Weingart refuses to illustrate the era and leaves only one object (the pen) as a sign, with everything else in his own contemporary language. The zigzag frame is likely cut film (Letterform on Nine Collages: "hand-cut films").
7. What would kill it — if "Schreibkunst" were set in a calligraphic typeface. Then the poster illustrates the subject instead of taking a stance on it, and the pen becomes redundant.

Principles: Moiré as a deliberate layer One typeface, wide scale To verify against the image: the second colour; whether the zigzag frame is a screen or a solid plane; whether the signature in the photograph is an actual historical example from the exhibition.

1. What it is — poster for the 18th international teaching-aids fair (Internationale Lehrmittelmesse), Basel, 24–28 March 1981. MoMA: lithograph, 128.9 × 90.2 cm, Christopher H. Browne Purchase Fund (207.2006); plakatarchiv: offset, multicolour.
2. Composition — vertical sheet. At the top, in a band, the date and place on the left, the fair's name on the right. The main field is a photomontage: at the top two photographs (a child at a desk, a teacher with a raised hand before a blackboard), over them a millimetre grid and a large "18." in a yellow circle-letter "d". The middle carries "DIDACTA / EURODIDAC" large, black, slightly diagonal. Below are geometric solids (cube, prism) in isometry, upper right a photograph of a hand on a keyboard. At the bottom is a protractor (a half-circle with a scale), the largest single shape, with a branch/diagram over it, all on a halftone of large dots and diagonal stripes in orange. The eye moves from the largest to the smaller: "18./DIDACTA" → protractor below → photographs above. The material is all from school: the grid, the protractor, geometric solids, the blackboard — the poster is a collage of teaching aids, literally.
3. Colour — yellow, orange, black, white, grey halftones. Yellow carries the title (the "18." in a circle, the yellow plane behind the teacher's photograph), orange works as diagonal energy in the stripes and dots at bottom right, black carries the text. The colours are flat, printer's colours — there's no tonal colour photography, the photographs are black-and-white over colour.
4. Typography — grotesque (sans serif). Not confirmed. The title is in two large lines, the second line shifted right; small text sits in the top band. There's little text — the poster speaks through objects, not sentences.
5. Message — at three seconds: school, geometry, yellow-orange, "18." At five metres: "DIDACTA EURODIDAC", the protractor. The message that comes through is clear: a teaching-aids fair, cheerful in tone. This is the most communicative poster in this note, because the client isn't an art institution but a fair, and the message has to reach the visitor.
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint is the client: a fair needs a clear message. It's given through teaching objects, while the author's own language (halftone, diagonal, overlap) stays as the substrate. A compromise that works.
7. What would kill it — removing the protractor. It's the only large, simple shape that holds the bottom half; without it only halftone would remain below and the poster would fall on its head.

Principles: Moiré as a deliberate layer Transparent layer as depth To verify against the image: Not verified whether "18." is inside the letter "d" or in a circle, what exactly the object at top right is, and how many colours the print carries (4 or spot).

1. What it is — poster for the exhibition of Swiss posters 1900–1984 at the Gewerbemuseum Basel (24 January – 11 March 1984, read off the poster). MoMA: offset lithograph, 120 × 84.1 cm, gift of the designer (457.1985); LACMA: offset lithograph, 127.6 × 90.2 cm, dated
2. Plakatarchiv lists two sheets from 1984: for the Gewerbemuseum Basel and for Birkhäuser Verlag (publisher of the catalogue "L'affiche Suisse / Das Schweizer Plakat"). The difference in dimensions between MoMA/LACMA is likely the difference between the two variants. Not verified against the image which is which. Eye on Design describes the exemplary "halftone film collage with fragmented dot screens revealing photo-mechanical processes."
3. Composition — vertical sheet; the top two-thirds are sky: clouds in a large halftone, with diagonal halftone stripes over them (like rain or sun rays), red-white bands along the left and top edges (like a tent or a flag), top left a red disc of the sun, beside it a green crescent, top right a white lightning bolt or a jagged mountain, on the right a white cross on red (the Swiss coat of arms) and a black silhouette of a bird; the bottom third — "Das / Schweizer Plakat / 1900–1984" in three lines, black, left-aligned, behind the text the title is repeated in grey, shifted (double impression, register). The gaze enters through the red sun at top left, slides across the clouds to the lightning bolt, falls on the title below. The title is the only stable element; everything above it is in motion.
4. Colour — red, yellow, grey, white, green. Red is Switzerland (the coat of arms, the bands), but broken into stripes and a disc — the coat of arms is quoted in fragments, not shown. Grey is the halftone of the clouds; yellow stripes. The colours overlap in halftones and produce third tones (orange between red and yellow). LACMA (for the series) describes "overlapping the pattern and text, creating a sense of depth."
5. Typography — grotesque (sans serif) bold (unconfirmed), three lines of different sizes ("Schweizer Plakat" the largest). The grey duplicate of the title behind the black one = two impressions out of register, which gives the title volume and ties it to the halftone above. The small exhibition details are in one line under the title.
6. Message — at three seconds: Swiss sky in halftone, red-white, the title. At five metres: red bands, sun, title. Message: Switzerland + poster. There's also irony — a poster for 84 years of Swiss posters quotes no poster at all, but rather the Alps, the sky, the coat of arms — kitsch motifs of the tourist poster — and translates them into a halftone language that has nothing to do with the tradition it represents. This is "reluctant inheritor" (Letterform) in a single image.
7. Why exactly this way — the end of the film phase: 1984 (Eye on Design) brings in the Mac. This is the last major film collage before bitmaps — and it looks like a bitmap (the large halftone of the clouds). The constraint was to represent an entire national poster tradition without privileging any single author — so the only solution was to show none at all.
8. What would kill it — a small collage of historical posters in the corner. Then it's a catalogue, not a stance; and the stance is the only reason this poster stands in MoMA.

Principles: Grain and blur as shape Moiré as a deliberate layer Legibility at the edge To verify against the image: which variant (Gewerbemuseum / Birkhäuser) is which in MoMA and LACMA; whether it's a lightning bolt or a mountain; exact number of colours.