Living and Dead Designers

Living

Wolfgang Weingart

Wolfgang Weingart, born in 1941, is a German typographer and graphic designer. He studied at the Schule Für Gestaltung Basel and taught there as well as many other colleges. Weingart is well known for experimenting with type and also for challenging conventions of Modern Swiss Typography. He gained international recognition in the 1970s from his visual language that challenged conceptions of Swiss typography back then. Wolfgang Wiengart was also known as the father of the New Wave style.

Jessica Walsh

Jessica Walsh, an American designer, was born in 1986. Not only is one of the younger designers in the group, but one of the few female designers in this selection. Jessica is an art director and illustrator, and a partner at Sagmeister and Walsh. She started at a young age, coding and designer websites at the age of 11. Her signature style has been described as “bold and emotional, and provocative.” Her style also consists of the occasional surrealistic flourish, and looks handmade. Jessica and her designer friend Tim Goodman worked on a blog that ended up being very successful called “40 days of dating”. They dated for 40 days to see if they could overcome issues they had in their relationship and eventually fall in love. Jessica Walsh is one of the top designers I enjoyed learning about because of her unique creativity.

Bruno Monguzzi

Bruno Monguzzi was born in 1941 in Switzerland. His career begun at Studio Boggeri in Mulan in the early 1960s. He studied typography, photography, and psychology of perception in London and in 1963 he became a teacher for typographic design in Venice. From 1965 to 1968 he spend a few years in Montreal where he designed a total of 9 pavilions for the expo 1967 World Expedition. Throughout the entire 1960s it was one of his busiest years as a designer.  Monguzzi’s work has also been exhibited and published in Europe, South and North America, Australia, Japan, and China.

Matthew Carter

Matthew Carter was born in 1937 in London. At the young age of 24 he created his own version of semi bold typeface Dante. He studied in the Netherlands and when he returned to London and became a freelance type and lettering designer. He designed type for many well known magazines and newspapers including The Washington Post, Time, New York Times, and many others. In 1981 he became the cofounder of Bitstream inc where he worked for 10 years. Some of the awards Carter has won include the AIGA medal and the Type Directors Club Medal. In 2010 he was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship and a year later the Lifetime Achievement Award.

April Grieman

April Grieman, like Jessica Walsh is American. She is a graphic designer and was a contributor to the development of the New Wave style in the U.S. One of her influential figures is Wolfgang Wiengart.  She appeared in one of Wiengart’s most infamous covers for Typographische Monatsblatter. Grieman combined typography, video, and digital media and created amazing graphics that are able to be situated with the avant-garde of the 1980s. Grieman produce many innovative artworks that are considered benchmarks in graphic design history.

Dead

Massimo Vignelli

Massimo Vignelli was an Italian Graphic Designer that designed book covers, shopping bags, furniture, corporate logos, and even a New York subway map. His work has been shown in North American and Europe and has a permanent collection in the MOMA. In New York, he taught at the institute design and Illinois institute of technology in Chicago for 3 years. In 2008 him and his wife, Lella, donated their entire archive of their design to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Vignelli later died at his home in Manhattan at the age of 83.

El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky was a Russian artist, designer, typographer, photographer, and architect. He designed many exhibitions and propaganda for the Soviet Union. At the age of 15, Lissitzky had already began a teaching career inspiring young jewish artist. He used his art for social and political change and believed art and life could collide and the former could become the latter. He later died from Tuberculosis.

Max Huber

Max Huber was born in Switzerland and studied at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts and majored in Graphic Design and Photography. He combined images and typography in a unique way that was influenced by futurism. His portfolio highly insisted of Architecture and Design, Politics, sports, music, and a variety of other things. He also worked for DU magazine and joined the Modern Artist of the Alliance group led by Max Bill and later died in 1992.

F.H.K. Henrion

F.H.K. Henrion was born in Germany and was a graphic designer that trained s a textile designer in Paris. In 1951 he established his own consultant agency, Henrion Design Associates, that focused on corporate identity, poster exhibition, packaging, and book design. His posters won 5 major awards at the international poster exhibiton in Vienna and he even designed Top Graphic Design and Design Coordination and Corporate Image. Henrion later died in 1990.

Emil Ruder

Emil Ruder is a clear and concise Typographer and Graphic Designer that was born in Switzerland. He taught people that typographer’s purpose was to communicate ideas through writing and he placed a heavy importance on Sans-serif typefaces. Ruder favored the asymmetrical compositions in design and the use of his grids had a great influence on the development of web design. He died at an early age,55, in 1970.