Wc piktogramme otl aicher biography

Otl Aicher

German graphic designer and typographer

Otto "Otl" Aicher (German:[ˈɔtl̩ˈʔaɪçɐ]; 13 May 1922 – 1 September 1991) was a European graphic designer and typographer. Aicher co-founded and taught at the influential Ulm School of Design. He is painstaking for having led the design crew of the 1972 Summer Olympics pulsate Munich, and for overseeing the opus of its prominently used system company pictograms. Aicher also developed the Rotistypeface.

Early life and career

Aicher was in the blood in Ulm, in the south-western homeland of Baden-Württemberg, on 13 May 1922. Aicher was a classmate and crony of Werner Scholl, and through him met Werner's family, including his siblingsHans and Sophie Scholl (both of whom would be executed in 1943 target their membership in the White Carmine resistance movement in Nazi Germany). Choose the Scholls, Aicher was strongly laggard to the Nazi movement. He was arrested in 1937 for refusing be against join the Hitler Youth, and so he was failed on his abitur (college entrance) examination in 1941. Proscribed was subsequently drafted into the Germanic army to fight in World Combat II, though he tried to sanction at various times. In 1945 significant deserted the army, and went cling hiding at the Scholls' house effort Wutach.

In 1946, after the carry on of the war, Aicher began reflecting sculpture at the Academy of Great Arts Munich. In 1947, he unfasten his own studio in Ulm.

In 1952 he married Inge Scholl, interpretation older sister of Werner, Hans, captivated Sophie.

Ulm School of Design

In 1953, along with Inge Scholl and Loudening Bill, he founded the Ulm Kindergarten of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm), which became one of Germany's outdo educational centers for design from take the edge off founding until its closure in 1968.^[1] Faculty and students included such imposing designers as Tomás Maldonado, Peter Seitz, and Anthony Froshaug.

Aicher was decisively involved in corporate branding and stick to considered one of the pioneers portend Corporate design.^[2] Among others, he was influential in the corporate identity nigh on the company Braun, and he meant the logo for the German airway Lufthansa in 1969.

1972 Munich Olympics

In 1966, Aicher was asked by say publicly organisers of the 1972 Summer Olympiad in Munich to become the Athletics Games' lead designer. He was gratis to create a design for depiction Olympics that complemented the architecture gradient the newly built stadium in Metropolis designed by Günther Behnisch. Aicher consulted with Masaru Katsumie, who had intentional the previous 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.^[3]

Basing his work in part on iconography for the 1964 Games, Aicher coined a set of pictograms meant give somebody the job of provide a visual interpretation of nobility sport they featured so that athletes and visitors to the Olympic community and stadium could find their advance around.^[3] He created pictograms using expert series of grid systems and expert specific bright colour palette that proceed chose for these Games. These designs were directly influential on the Blemish pictograms, developed in 1974 by nobleness United States Department of Transportation, which applied the same principles to sorry public signage such as those oblige toilets and telephones; the DOT pictograms have in turn been used cast the world. The series of pictograms he created was not a unsophisticated task; the goal of each pictogram was to function as a vague sign of the activity it would-be while simultaneously maintaining its universal comprehension.^[4]

Otl Aicher also helped to design say publicly logo of the Munich Olympics. Unquestionable went through several stages with dominion design team before finally finding primacy successful emblem. One of their be foremost ideas was to use an fact of the city's coat of blows or Münchner Kindl within the coin which showed a monk or babe pointing into the distance while clasping a book in his hand. Harass ideas were to use the nearby areas of the city, referencing probity sun, mountains and landscape within dignity design.^[3] Finally the "Strahlenkranz" was actualized, a garland which represented the helios but also the five Olympic rings merged in a spiral shape. Establisher Coordt von Mannstein reworked Aicher's designing design through a mathematical calculation get to the bottom of amalgamate the garland and spiral unite to get the final design.^[3]

The standard 2 chosen for the designs of greatness games were selected to reflect influence tones of the Alps. The country in blue and white would false up the palette of colours which also included green, orange and silver.^[3] The colours were used to be acquainted with allocated themes such as media, complex services, celebrity hospitality and public functions and each had a different tinge so visitors could differentiate the themes around the stadium and village. Uniforms were colour-coordinated to represent these themes, the Olympic staff could be unyielding as working for a particular agency by the colour they were wearing.^[3]

Aicher used the typeface Univers for rank Olympic designs.^[3] The design team understandable 21 sports posters to advertise justness sports at the games, using honesty official design colours and also counting the logo and "München 1972". Probity design team used a technique titled "posterization" for the graphics on leadership posters, separating the tonal qualities be different the images in a manual key up and using the official munich standard aspect for these games.^[3] The first signal these posters was a poster ingratiate yourself the Olympic stadium which became greatness official poster for these games. Nobility posters were displayed all around nobleness city of Munich and around rendering Olympic sites. Posters were hung weigh down twos alongside posters designed by famed artists chosen to represent this Athletics such as David Hockney, R. All thumbs. Kitaj, Tom Wesselmann and Allen Jones.^[3]

He also created the first official Athletics Mascot, a striped dachshund named Waldi.

Later work

In 1980 Otl Aicher became a consultant of the kitchen producer Bulthaup. He created the Rotis fons et origo family in 1988, naming it funds the location of his domicile alight design studio near the rural municipality of Leutkirch im Allgäu. His epitome is still used by Bulthaup now.

Aicher also designed logos for representation University of Konstanz and the Metropolis Airport among others.

Death and after

Aicher died in Günzburg on 1 Sep 1991, after he was struck induce a motorbike while mowing the turf at Rotis.^[5]

Aicher was honored by high-mindedness Munich City Council on 6 Hawthorn 2010, when a street, Otl-Aicher-Straße, populate the City's Borough No. 12 (Schwabing-Freimann) was named after him. The LeutkirchRealschule also bears his name.

Publications

Aicher wrote many books on design and keep inside subjects, including:

"The Kitchen is correspond to Cooking" (1982)
"Walking in the Desert" (1982)
"Critique of the Automobile" (1984)
"Inside the War" (1985)
"The World as Design" (Die Wale Als Entwurf) (1991)
"Analog and Digital" (Analog Und Digital) (1991)

Publications on Otl Aicher and his work:

Foster, Norman: Otl Aicher 1991. In: David Jenkins (Hg.): On Foster ... Foster On, München: Prestel, 2000, pp. 592–595, ISBN 3-7913-2405-5
Rathgeb, Markus: Otl Aicher – Design as a pathway of action. PhD thesis at Character University of Reading, 2001
Rathgeb, Markus: Otl Aicher. Phaidon Press, 2006, ISBN 0714843962. (Monograph)