User:JonathanCole/sandbox

Gert Wiescher, German Graphic Artist, Type Designer,and Author
Gert Wiescher (Born: July 26, 1944 in Braunsbach am Kocher/Germany) is a German graphic-designer, type designer, and author. He is well known for an almost complete re-design of Bodoni classic typefaces, the work of Giambattista Bodoni, the 17th century Italian typographer. Wiescher’s Bodoni-Classic typefaces are known to be the most true to the original. He has also designed many new typefaces and is one of today’s most prolific type designers.

Vita

At 14 years of age, Wiescher went to Paris to study fine art. He financed his stay by doing portraits on the famous »Place du Tertre« on Montmatre. He was already a skilled portraitist in his early years. It was during this time that he acquired the whimsical nickname, "Pablo" from many of his friends and colleagues.

Later in the 60’s Wiescher studied graphic design at Berlin academy of fine arts. He financed his studies by sidewalk painting and drawing portraits for money.

In Berlin, Wiescher met Erik Spiekermann while doing sidewalk paintings. Spiekermann infected him with the bacillus typographicus.

After two years he quit his studies at Berlin academy – during the demonstrations and strikes in the violent years of the 68-generation, studying was almost impossible. From there he went to Barcelona where he designed the OECD-Pavillion of the 1970 Osaka-world-expo working at the offices of »Harnden & Bombelli«.

In 1972 he moved on to Johannesburg working at »Grey« and »Young« advertising as an art-director. During a 1975 holiday in Munich »Dorland-advertising« made him a good offer so he returned to Germany. Shortly after his return he changed jobs and worked for »Herrwerth & Partner« ad agency where he was involved in introducing IKEA into the German market. In 1977 he became creative partner in the »Lauenstein & Partner« ad-agency creating mainly campaigns for big German retail chains. In 1982 he started his own design-office, creating work for editors (Markt & Technik, Systhema and Langen-Müller-Herbig), computer companies (House of Computers, FileNet) and he worked for Apple-Computers designing their publications (Apple-Age and Apple-LIVE). During his time in advertising he won many prizes for advertising spot concepts (Berliner-Klappe a.s.o.).

With the first Apple-Macintosh he started to digitalize typefaces for his own use. This work resulted in a first small typeface collection, which he marketed through Erik and Joan Spiekermanns »Font-Shop«. He suggested the idea of recreating the Bodoni original typefaces to Font-Shop. Subsequently he worked on the »Bodoni-Classic« family for more than ten years. Building on this work he has created, up to now, over 300 font families with far more than 1000 different weights. Wiescher is surely Germany’s most prolific type designer. Wiescher also designed a new version of the Logotype and created an entire font in that style for his beloved Munich local newspaper »Abendzeitung« (Evening News). For »VOGUE« Moscow he developed a special Cyrillic version of Bodoni-Classic. Ringnier publishers in Zürich also use a special Bodoni Classic version. Wiescher’s typeface »Red Tape« is on permanent exhibition at the German-National-Library in Leipzig.

Wiescher’s early interest in fine art has come full circle with the development of his GlyphArt works, now beginning to be exhibited in fine art venues as well as on the internet.

Gert Wiescher has two sons, Konstantin and Julius. Julius has designed a few typefaces.

Publications •	▪	Professionelles Gestalten mit PageMaker, Markt & Technik Verlag, München, 1988, ISBN-3-89090-584-6 •	▪	Desktop Advertising, Wirtschaftsverlag Langen Müller/Herbig, München, 1990, ISBN-3-7844-7261-3 •	▪	Zeitschriften & Broschüren, Systhema-Verlag, München, 1990, ISBN-3-89390-312-7 •	▪	Professionells Gestalten mit PageMaker 4.0, Systhema-Verlag, München, 1991, ISBN-3-89390-356-9 •	▪	Schriftdesign, Systhema-Verlag, München, 1991, ISBN-3-89390-316-0 •	▪	Logos, Monogramme & Icons, Systhema-Verlag, München, 1991, ISBN-3-89390-315-1 •	▪	Blitzkurs Typografie, Systhema-Verlag, München, 1992, ISBN-3-89390-446-8 •	▪	Blitzkurs Zeitschriftengestaltung, Systhema-Verlag, München, 1992, ISBN-3-89390-943-5 •	▪	Blitzreferenz Farbe, Systhema-Verlag, München, 1992, ISBN-3-89390-447-6 •	▪	Geliebte Provenzalische Küche, Mary-Hahn-Verlag, München, 1996, ISBN-3-87287-431-4 •	▪	Crostini und Panini, Mary-Hahn-Verlag, München, 1998, ISBN-3-87287-451-1 •	▪	Für Gäste das Beste, Mary-Hahn-Verlag, München, 2001, ISBN-3-87287-492-4 •	▪	Das Brain Projekt, Kindle Edition, 2011, ASIN B005T2XBIW •	▪	User Manual Europe, English Kindle Edition, 2011, ASIN B00533K69Y

Weblinks http://www.wiescher.de http://new.myfonts.com/newsletters/cc/200812.html http://www.identifont.com/find?name=bodoni http://www.myfonts.com/search/wiescher/fonts/ http://luc.devroye.org/germany.html JonathanCole (talk) 01:10, 4 August 2012 (UTC)