NEW WAVE / PUNK
1970´s - 1980´s
New Wave design was influenced by Punk and postmodern language theory. But there is a debate as to whether New Wave is a break or a natural progression of the Swiss Style.Sans-seriffont still predominates, but the New Wave differs from its predecessor by stretching the limits of legibility. The break from the grid structure meant that type could be set center, ragged left, ragged right, or chaotic. The artistic freedom produced common forms such as the bold stairstep. The text hierarchy also strayed from the top down approach of the International Style. Text became textured with the development of transparent film and the increase in collage in graphic design. Further breakdown of minimalist aesthetic is seen in the increase of the number of type sizes and colours of fonts. Although punk and psychedelia embody the anti-corporate nature of their respective groups, the similarity between New Wave and the International Style has led some to label New Wave as “softer, commercialized punk culture.”
Wolfgang Weingart is credited with developing New Wave typography in the early 1970s at the Basel School of Design, Switzerland. New Wave along with other postmodern typographical styles, such as Punk and Psychedelia, arose as reactions to International Typographic Style or Swiss Style which was very popular with corporate culture. International Typographic Style embodied the modernist aesthetic of minimalism, functionality, and logical universal standards. Postmodernist aesthetic rebuked the less is more philosophy, by ascribing that typography can play a more expressive role and can include ornamentation to achieve this. The increase in expression aimed to improve communication. Therefore, New Wave designers such as Weingart felt intuition was just as valuable as analytical skill in composition.The outcome is an increased kinetic energy in designs. The adoption of New Wave Typography in the United States came through multiple channels. Weingart gave a lecture tour on the topic in the early 1970s which increased the number of American graphic designers who traveled to the Basel School for postgraduate training which they brought back to the States. Some of the prominent students from Weingart’s classes include April Greiman, Dan Friedman, and Willi Kunz (b.1943).They further developed the style, for example Dan Friedman rejected the term legibility for the broader term readability. The increase in ornamentation was further developed by William Longhauser and can be seen through the playful lettering used to display an architectural motif in an exhibition poster for Michael Graves. Another strong contributor to the New Wave movement was the Cranbrook Academy of Art and their co-chair of graphic design, Katherine McCoy. McCoy asserted that “reading and viewing overlap and interact synergistically in order to create a holistic effect that features both modes of interpretation.”
The complexity of composition increased with the New Wave which transitioned well into computer developed graphic design. Complexity came to define the new digital aesthetic in graphic design. April Greiman was one of the first graphic designers to embrace computers and the New Wave aesthetic is still visible in her digital works.
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traveling and lecturing throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia.He taught a new approach to typography that influenced the development of New Wave, Deconstruction and much of graphic design in the 1990s. While he would contest that what he taught was also Swiss Typography, since it developed naturally out of Switzerland, the style of typography that came from his students led to a new generation of designers that approached most design in an entirely different manner than traditional Swiss typography.
Weingart was most influential as a teacher and a design philosopher. He began teaching at the Basel School of Design, where he was appointed an instructor of typography by Armin Hofman in 1963. He also taught for the Yale University Summer Design Program in Brissago. Throughout his entire career he spent time
WOLFGANG WEINGART
educated on the standard practices of design and typography when she began to break them. It was in Basel that she studied with Wolfgang Weingart, whom taught her the ideas and philosophies of new wave typography. Not limited to the basics of graphic design she is also an accomplished photographer and works in a variety of mediums. She finds the title graphic designer too limiting and prefers to call herself a trans-media artist. Her work has inspired designers to develop the computer as a tool of design and to be curious and searching in their design approach. She operates and works out of a studio in Los Angeles titled Made In Space, where she “...blends technology, science, word and image with color and space...”
APRIL GREIMAN
the 1980s the computer hit the consumer market on a variety of different fronts. At the time the computer was seen as a tool for technology based industries, but April Greiman took advantage of its potential as a new visual medium and helped usher in the digital era of design as she pushed the boundaries of design. A graduate of the legendary Basel School of Design in Switzerland, Greiman was well
