How Can One Make Swiss Typography? (Wolfgang Weingart)

Allow us to just copy and paste the “Note on this current, fourth reproduction” because we can’t write this up any better than Wolfgang Weingart did: This manuscript contains the original manuscript text of 1972. Alterations of internal school policy in recent years, indicates that the original rear to manuscript’s concepts and ideas, pertaining to our intended interdisciplinary exchange, between typography and other fields, are no longer a viable possibility. This manuscript was used for more than two years, in over forty lectures in both the English and German languages. Extreme rejection or approval was the reaction of the viewers. It is for this reason that the author reprints the original, unabridged, manuscript text. It is intended that this manuscript not be reproduced again. The author has been working for several years on a teaching manual for typography, and has decided not to introduce another “Typography-Swipe-File” onto the market; but rather, a teaching and example book for typography. The captions and illustrations are accompanied by their appropriate text. These illustrations are contact copies of the original lecture slides. This self-published, plastic-comb-bound paper was produced in very small quantities and refined over a period of four years: September 1972: 50 copies; December 1972: 35 copies; October 1973: 30 copies; April 1976: 100 copies. Added up, that’s just 215 copies in English. (And there were six German editions printed over roughly the same period totaling 272 copies.) OCLC shows not a single copy in any library in the US—although we know Letterform Archive has one from 1972. Just think, you and Letterform Archive! A fascinating, informative, infuriating, and exceedingly rare document.