Wolfgang Weingart was a Swiss punk graphic designer and lecturer that is regarded as the father of New Wave typography. As the stark cleanliness of the Swiss style took over the world of design, Weingart was one of the first to come along and disregard it. He felt the need to, in his words, “blow it up”, and create something new and different. Above is an example of his work, and blowing up the Swiss style is exactly what he did. New Wave typography was the “ugly” design of the time, and yet Weingart was a teacher and lover of typography. He knew all of the rules, and that’s why he had to break them. There is value in experimenting with that ideal. It’s the same with painting; someone like Jackson Pollock had to be well versed in traditional methods of painting before flipping the script and successfully flinging paint around. Someone who had never painted before, in my opinion, could not successfully imitate Pollock. The only way to break the rules and make it work is to master them first; while some may argue that this leads to amateur artists highjacking a new movement that’s easy because it’s “ugly”, I’d argue that there is a difference between “ugly” art, and UGLY art. Art that has no conceptual background, no thesis, no method of thinking, is easy to spot. Weingart’s work is anything but that; it’s filled to the brim with concept and experience and meaningful decisions. Ugly art has nothing to do with aesthetics, and everything to do with meaning. It also has a more flattering name to fall under: flawed human design.