Czech by birth, he was educated in England at Leighton Park School and held degrees in architecture from Cornell University[1] and Columbia University School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
He redesigned more than 200 publications on four continents, and influenced many more with his books and articles about design for print.
[citation needed] Initially focused on periodical design, in the mid-1980s White brought his analysis of the visual rhetoric of structure, white space and typographic hierarchy to bear on corporate publishing in a way that shared common ground with information design.
As an educator 'his most valued contribution for people trying to learn how to design has been his articulation, in very clear and easy-to-follow language, what publication design is about; and his insistence that it is not a mystery, but a rational activity of manipulating the elements of a publication in order to achieve certain defined communication outcomes.
[4] He was the son of the illustrator and architect Emil Weiss,[5] and the father of the designer, writer and educator Alex W White.