Readymag Stories: Dan Friedman

basel + wolfgang weingart

The Basel School of Design became Friedman’s second attempt to study in Europe, and the difference was mind-blowing: the school was already taken over by rebels and revolutionaries like Wolfgang Weingart who advocated for intuitive, against-the-grid teaching. There Dan Friedman learned all kinds of professional radicalism and was ready to bring it back home.

Dan Friedman, Wolfgang Weingart Speaks to America, poster for a college lecture tour, 1972.

Poster for a college lecture tour. A calendar with a picture of Wolfgang Weingart

Cover, Typograpfishe Monatsblatter. Letters flying in space combined with a night city photo

Magazine cover. Multiple letters N on a white background

Cover, Typograpfishe Monatsblatter, 19717.

Yale Symphony poster, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner. A letter B

Yale Symphony poster, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, 1973. Collection of Tom Strong.

what appealed to me was making things with my own hands, getting dirty, raw and messy. it was the antithesis of working in a clean graphic design environment. —dan friedman

A red, green, yellow, grey and black armchair with one arm and a drawer under the seat

Mutant Chair, 1985. Produced in collaboration with Paul Ludick. © Joe Coscia, Jr.

teaching

Upon returning to States, Dan Friedman started teaching at Yale University. For him personally, New Wave wasn’t just a edgy, punky style but more about developing a new methodology for teaching design. From legibility, Friedman shifted focus to the “unpredictability” of typography, its expressive ability to captivate and move a viewer. A typical exercise Friedman gave to his students was to match a phrase against three pictures in order to expose its alternative meanings.

Assemblage, c. 1986. Collection of Kate Carmel.

An assemblage resembling a Dali picture in red, yellow, green and blue

Deep Sea Meltdown, assemblage, c.1987.

Dan Friedman (middle row, left) with his Yale Class 1973–94.

when the “look” of modernism was appropriated by industry and named the international style, it lost moral authority. —dan friedman

New Year's Card. A face, black circles and a number 1986 floating in space

Detail, NewYear’s Card, 1986.

corporate years

The need to prove his theories in the field pushed Dan Friedman to break new ground and take a job with a design studio. He was offered a senior position in Anspach Grossman Portugal to work on the Citibank rebranding and moved to New York. Friedman created a corporate identity that employed all his typography knowledge and talent. Four years later he joined Pentagram where he continued to work on branding, packaging and letterheads.