Wolfgang Weingart attended the Merz Academy in Stuttgart from 1958 to 1960. There he came into contact with typesetting for the first time. From 1960 to 1963, he then completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter at the Ruwe printing company in Stuttgart. This was where he got to know Swiss typography and what made it special. In the following year, Weingart studied at the Basel School of Applied Arts under Emil Ruder and Armin Hofmann.

In addition to learning the basics of design, he was also able to realize his own projects in the school’s typesetting department. He experimented with the letter M and with free line compositions in lead. Weingart made unconventional use of the typesetting material and the transfer press to create typographic images based on his own impressions. He published some of his works from this period in “Typografische Monatsblätter” and as special editions between 1967 and 1971.

From 1968 to 1999, Wolfgang Weingart himself was a teacher of typography in the newly founded further education class for graphic design at the Basel School of Design. Instead of teaching his students principles of order and the proper use of typographic means, he focused more on how to approach design tasks and how to develop a creative personality. In 2000, his class moved to the Basel University of Art and Design. He continued to teach typography there until he retired in 2004.

Along the way, he took on teaching assignments in Brissago for the Yale Summer Program in Graphic Design (which had a large influence on many American designers in that program). Since 1972, he has lectured worldwide and been a guest lecturer in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

In his own work, Weingart worked with lead typesetting in the early 1970s and experimented with photo-optics. He then began to layer and collage images and writing using transparent litho films, thus to some extent anticipating the digital sampling of the postmodern New Wave. From 1984 onwards, he promoted the combination of analog and digital techniques. This led to the School of Design even introducing the first Apple computer, the Macintosh. It served as a teaching machine and tool in his typography workshop.

From 1978 to 1999, Weingart was a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI). For his work, he has received several international awards. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in liberal arts by the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 2005, received the AIGA Medal in 2013, and the Grand Prix Design from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture in 2014.

Wolfgang Weingart revolutionized modern Swiss typography and renewed the typography profession. He influenced designers from all over the world through his teaching.