Wolfgang Weingart

1. Šta je — the cover of a trade journal, first from a series of fifteen (1972–73). Hand lead composition in the school's composing room, letterpress (TM Research Archive: „hand-composition and film materials"). Quarto, about 23 × 30 cm. Weingart conceived the covers as „covers for learning": each one poses a question — what is typography, what is communication, what is text.
2. Kompozicija — a grey field, a small „1" in the top left corner, 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 extends to the right. To the right of the block a narrow column of small type (the journal's name, numbers), below it another paragraph of small setting. The eye enters the large word, falls on the small column to the right, returns down to the paragraph. There is no grid holding these three elements together — Letterform Archive: „operate outside the bounds of the conventional grid system", „imbalanced asymmetries". The cover of 5/1972 goes further: a centred definition of the word SPRACHE in five to six lines, each line in a different cut, with underlines under individual words (screenshot).
3. Boja — one: black on grey paper (1/1972), black on white (5/1972). Colour is not the subject; the subject is the weight of the setting.
4. Tipografija — Akzidenz-Grotesk, CONFIRMED (Letterform Archive) — a 19th-century typeface that TM had abandoned in favour of Univers; Weingart brings it back as a gesture. „Conspicuous variety of line weights": within one sentence several cuts, a word changes weight mid-line (5/1972: „SPRACHE:" bold, „Ein sozial-" light, „institutionalisiertes" bold). An underline beneath a word as in handwriting.
5. Poruka — at three seconds: a large German word, scientific tone, grey. From five metres: a journal for printers. The real message is for the trade: a cover that itself does not behave by the rules it preaches inside. Tschichold read it exactly right.
6. Zašto baš ovako — the constraint is lead: the setting can be spaced out, underlined, mix cuts, but not overlapped. That's why the covers of 1972–73 are still „typographic" in the narrower sense — everything he does is done in the composing room, without film. Later, on film, the same stance gains layers.
7. Šta bi ga ubilo — one cut instead of five. With a single cut this is a plain Swiss cover, only somewhat clumsily laid out — Büchler without Büchler.

Principi: citljivost-na-granici jedno-pismo-siroka-skala stepenasti-tekst-kao-oblik (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 — 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 a printer but it is the same format and same acquisition fund 264.2002). The series was made alongside the Typographic Process column in TM (from 1972). This is not a poster advertising something — it's a teaching panel that explains a method.
2. Composition — 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 4 × 3 fields, each one exercise: "Cinema" with letterspaced type, "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 cutting through them. The eye reads it like a textbook page: row by row, left → right, from simple (letterspaced word) to complex (letter cut by a diagonal). The grid is there — but as a frame for demonstration, not as a poster composition.
3. Colour — black on cream paper. Monochrome, because the subject of the demonstration is the form of the type; colour would blur the variable.
4. Typography — Akzidenz-type grotesque (class; not confirmed for this sheet). All exercises use the same typeface in several weights — the typeface is the constant, what changes is spacing, angle, ground, 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 of letters. From five metres: only "NR.2". The message isn't for the passerby but for the student who stops in front and reads — the poster as a lesson on a classroom wall.
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint is pedagogical: he has to show the PROCEDURE, so he must break it down into steps someone else can repeat. Hence the grid of fields: each field is one step, one changed variable. The series Nr 1–5 is the same principle across five topics (organised textual structures, from simple to complex, calendar structures, typographic symbols, typography as painting).
7. What would kill it — merging the fields into a single composition. Then it's a poster that looks like Weingart, and the lesson disappears — and the lesson is the only content.

Principles: program-umjesto-artefakta varijabla-do-otkaza 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 hedge.
2. Composition — same top block as on Nr 2 (small text left, "NR.5" right). Below there's no grid of fields but one large free composition: the word "T E E" large, spaced across half the width; "ZüRICH" with letters of different sizes, ü dropped down; black horizontal bands across the middle of the sheet, on one of them circles as the end of a line; two "staircases" — blocks climbing in steps from left and right toward the centre, like stylised pyramids; below "Lugano" and "COMO" with letters set off diagonally, below them bands repeating the staircases. The eye enters through "T E E", slides along the black band to "ZüRICH", falls down the staircase to "Lugano/COMO". The composition is a journey — Zürich, Lugano, Como are stations, the staircases are the Alps. Not confirmed by literature — a reading of the image.
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 a full plane to the greyness of letters on paper.
4. Typography — Akzidenz-type grotesque (class; unconfirmed). Three treatments of the same typeface: spacing up to +200 (T E E), mixed sizes in one word (ZüRICH), letter as a black mass (the staircases are actually type: lines and squares from the composing case). This is directly from his discovery: when spacing increases, the word becomes graphic and "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, maybe a landscape. From five metres: staircases and bands, the words disappear. The message: typographic material — lead, lines, squares — can PAINT, and do so without an image. That's 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 staircases are probably set from rule material (Letterform: already in Stuttgart "distorting existing metal type blocks to create new letterforms and modular motifs"). Hence there are no curves except the circles.
7. What would kill it — adding a photograph of the Alps. Then the staircases become an illustration of a mountain and the whole thesis (typography AS painting, not alongside painting) collapses.

Principles: stepenasti-tekst-kao-oblik citljivost-na-granici varijabla-do-otkaza 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 a montage of photographic film — Letterform Archive explicitly: "produced entirely through the complex layering of photographic films".
2. Composition — cover (screenshot, small): left a white block of dense text with the title "Ist diese Typografie noch zu retten?" (can this typography still be saved?), right a photomontage: a woman's face, a mechanical wheel/lens, halftone planes overlapping, diagonal lines. The text and image don't split into two zones but overlap along the edge. Inner spreads (Letterform): letterspaced type, shifted images, thick black text frames and a broken grid OVER a photograph of a desert; fragments of text break apart on one side 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" — negative as colour.
4. Typography — grotesque (unconfirmed). Syncopation: horizontal lines that "cross through the lines of text" — the line is no longer a frame but a participant in the type. Letterform: "passages of heavily degraded type" — type photographed by a 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 doesn't 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 exposures, degradation — everything lead (item 01) didn't allow. This issue is the first time the whole of TM passes through his darkroom, and that's 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 type on the same montage. The degradation of the letters is the argument; without it, it's a collage with a title.

Principles: providni-sloj-kao-dubina zrno-i-zamucenje-kao-oblik To verify against the image: the whole cover in a larger reproduction (Letterform gallery "hi-fi captures" — click for fullscreen, not opened); who the woman in the photograph is; whether the desert spread is in the same issue or in the feature.

1. What it is — exhibition poster for the annual exhibition of the state art purchase (Staatlicher Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt) at Kunsthalle Basel, 7–30 May 1977. First from the Kunstkredit poster series 1977–83 (plakatarchiv: seven sheets). 128 × 90.2 cm (B4); MoMA: lithograph; LACMA: offset lithograph; plakatarchiv: offset, ONE COLOUR. Gift of Clarisse Alcock Bronfman (MoMA 208.2006).
2. Composition — upright sheet, black-and-white, built from overlapping layers: at top "KUNSTHALLE BASEL" in two lines, the second line larger and indented; "KUNSTKREDIT 1976/77" in negative (white on black) over a grey screen; subtitle in a black band; left, a column of small print (Öffnungszeiten); centre — a photograph of a lens or mechanical wheel, behind it crumpled paper, top right a cross (Basel's coat of arms in the form of a cross? — to verify); bottom "Ausstellung 7. bis 30. Mai 1977" and a photograph of the Kunsthalle façade cut diagonally; bottom left diagonal screen stripes. Running through it all are thin black lines (grid, axes), 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: "complicated the picture plane by overlapping the pattern and text, creating a sense of depth throughout the composition."
3. Colour — one colour (black), but with at least four tones: solid black, negative, fine screen, coarse screen. Tone is made by the screen, not by pigment — hence LACMA: "the building blocks of offset imagery — lithographic half-tone dot and overlapping moiré patterns — as graphic elements". Colour would be surplus here; the whole tonal system is already in the screen.
4. Typography — Akzidenz-type grotesque (class, unconfirmed), in two registers: large titles as flat shapes (some in negative) and small text 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. Message: the exhibition is not shown (no artwork appears on the poster) — the poster itself is the artwork competing with the exhibition. Eye 4/1991: the halftone dot as an "independent graphic element".
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint: one colour and B4 format. With one colour it has to achieve depth, so he stacks screens at different angles on a light table — Eye on Design: "stacked film layers inches high; over-exposed type via repro camera". The moiré is not a mistake but a third tone that emerges between two screens.
7. What would kill it — aligning the screens (same angle, same line count). The moiré disappears, the depth disappears, leaving a tidy black-and-white reproduction — and then it looks like an unfinished sketch for a Hofmann poster.

Principles: moare-je-namjeran-sloj zrno-i-zamucenje-kao-oblik providni-sloj-kao-dubina To verify against the image: the identity of the object at centre (camera lens? valve?); the mark top right; whether the poster is really one colour (the MoMA reproduction is grey, but plakatarchiv says "Offset, einfarbig").

1. What it is — exhibition poster for the Kunstgewerbemuseum Zürich (Museum für Gestaltung), the exhibition "Schreibkunst — Schulkunst und Volkskunst in der deutschsprachigen Schweiz 1548 bis 1980", 13 June – 30 August 1981, Ausstellungsstrasse 60 (read from the poster). LACMA: offset lithograph, 127.6 × 90.2 cm; plakatarchiv: offset, TWO COLOURS. Pinterest/auction listings cite the Swiss Poster Award 1981 (unconfirmed by a primary source).
2. Composition — upright sheet; the top third is held by 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 date bands to the right ("13. Juni –
3. August 1981", "Ausstellungsstrasse 60"); "Museum für Gestaltung" in a black band; then "Schreibkunst." large in a grey field, subtitle in three lines; bottom, opening hours in a black band. All of this sits on a ground of geometric planes: triangles, zigzag bands along the left and bottom edge as a jagged frame, screens and stripes breaking diagonally. A lightning-shape (zigzag) to the right of "Schreibkunst" echoes the stroke of the pen. The eye: pen → museum name (steps, left) → Schreibkunst → dates. TGDS: a calligraphic pattern over grid-set type "at extreme scale contrasts" — an argument that the grid and historical calligraphy are not opposed but cumulative.
4. Colour — cannot be established from the LACMA reproduction (black-and-white photograph); plakatarchiv: two colours. To verify against the image — which is the second colour and where.
5. Typography — grotesque (unconfirmed). The museum name letterspaced to the point where the four words become four equal bands — typography as structure, not as 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.
6. Message — at three seconds: the pen and the word Schreibkunst. From five metres: the pen, the zigzag, black bands. The message is witty: a poster about Swiss school handwriting made with means that are the opposite of handwriting (screen, film, grotesque) — and handwriting is allowed in only as an image. The trade (typographers) reads it as a stance; the public sees a pen.
7. Why exactly this way — the subject is historical (1548–1980), so the temptation was to make an "old" poster. He refuses illustration of the era and leaves only one object (the pen) as a sign, with everything else in his own contemporary language. The zigzag frame is probably cut film (Letterform on Nine Collages: "hand-cut films").
8. What would kill it — setting "Schreibkunst" in a calligraphic font. Then the poster illustrates the theme instead of taking a stance on it, and the pen becomes redundant.

Principles: moare-je-namjeran-sloj jedno-pismo-siroka-skala 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 — upright sheet, at top a band with date and place on the left, the fair's name on the right; the main field is a photomontage: at top two photographs (a child at a desk, a teacher with a raised hand in front of a blackboard), over them a millimetre grid and a large "18." in a yellow circle-letter "d"; centre — "DIDACTA / EURODIDAC" large, black, tilted slightly diagonal; below — geometric solids (cube, prism) in isometric view, upper right a photograph of a hand on a keyboard; bottom a protractor (half-circle with graduation) as the largest single shape, over it a branch/diagram, all on a coarse-dot screen and diagonal orange stripes. The eye: "18./DIDACTA" (the largest) → protractor below → photographs above. The material is all from school: grid, protractor, geometric solids, blackboard — the poster is a collage of teaching aids, literally.
3. Colour — yellow, orange, black, white, grey screens. Yellow carries the title ("18." in a circle, yellow plane behind the teacher's photograph), orange works as diagonal energy in stripes and dots at bottom right, black carries the text. The colours are flat, printed — there is no tonal colour photography, the photographs are black-and-white over colour.
4. Typography — grotesque (unconfirmed). The title in two large lines, the second line shifted to the right; small text in the top band. Little text — the poster speaks through objects, not sentences.
5. Message — at three seconds: school, geometry, yellow-orange, "18." From five metres: "DIDACTA EURODIDAC", the protractor. The message gets through: a teaching-aids fair, and it is cheerful. This is his most communicative poster in this set of notes — because the client is not an art institution but a trade fair, and the message has to reach the visitor.
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint is the client: a fair demands a clear message, he delivers it through teaching objects, while keeping his own language (screen, diagonal, overlap) as the ground. A compromise that works.
7. What would kill it — removing the protractor. It is the only large simple shape holding the lower half; without it the bottom is just a screen and the poster tips over.

Principles: moare-je-namjeran-sloj providni-sloj-kao-dubina To verify against the image: whether the "18." is inside the letter "d" or in a circle; what exactly the object at the upper right is; the number of print colours (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, reading of 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 Gewerbemuseum Basel and for Birkhäuser Verlag (publisher of the catalogue "L'affiche Suisse / Das Schweizer Plakat"). The difference in dimensions between MoMA/LACMA is probably a difference between two variants — see Notes on sources. Eye on Design: exemplary "halftone film collage with fragmented dot screens revealing photo-mechanical processes."
3. Composition — upright sheet; the top two thirds are sky: clouds in coarse halftone, over them diagonal stripes of screen (like rain or sun rays), red-and-white bands at the left and top edge (like a tent or flag), top left a red disc of the sun, next to it a green crescent, top right a white lightning bolt or a jagged mountain, 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 repeats in grey, shifted (double impression, register). The eye enters through the red sun top left, slides across the clouds to the lightning bolt, falls onto the title below. The title is the only stable element; everything above it moves.
4. Colour — red, yellow, grey, white, green. Red is Switzerland (coat of arms, bands), but broken into stripes and a disc — the coat of arms is quoted in fragments, not shown. Grey is the screen of the clouds; yellow the stripes. The colours overlap in the screens and produce third tones (orange between red and yellow). LACMA (for the series): "overlapping the pattern and text, creating a sense of depth."
5. Typography — bold grotesque (sans serif) (not confirmed), three lines of different sizes ("Schweizer Plakat" the largest). The grey duplicate of the title behind the black one = two impressions offset, which gives the title volume and ties it to the screen above. Small exhibition details in one line under the title.
6. Message — at three seconds: Swiss sky in halftone, red-and-white, title. From five metres: red bands, sun, title. Message conveyed: Switzerland + poster. But with irony — a poster for 84 years of Swiss posters quotes not a single poster, but the Alps, the sky, the coat of arms — kitsch motifs of the tourist poster — and translates them into a halftone language which has nothing to do with the tradition it represents. This is a "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 the bitmap — and it looks like a bitmap (coarse halftone of the clouds). Constraint: represent an entire national poster tradition without privileging any one author — so the only solution was to show none.
8. What would kill it — putting a small collage of historical posters in the corner. Then it's a catalogue, not a stance; and stance is the only reason this poster stands in MoMA.

Principles: zrno-i-zamucenje-kao-oblik moare-je-namjeran-sloj citljivost-na-granici 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.