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.

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.

 

An assemblage

Assemblage, c. 1986. Collection of Kate Carmel.

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