A Biography of Otl Aicher

A Biography of

Otl Aicher

by Claudia Stephanie

1922 - 1991

A Biography of Otl Aicher for General Audience.

ISBN: 0 207 19832 4 JANUS Book Publishing An imprint of ClassicPenguinPublishers First published in United Kingdom, London 2014

by ClassicPenguinPublishers Pty Ltd ABN 36009913517 Copyright © Buena Vista Books 2014

A Biography of

Otl Aicher

by Claudia Stephanie

1922 - 1991

Table of

Contents

1 2

Introduction p. 8

Otl Aicher: Who Is He? Early Life

Education p.14

Early Education Founder of Ulm School

3 4 5 6

Aicher’s Works p.20

Lufthansa Identity Design Braun Identity Design

Munich

Rotis Font

Death and After

p. 30

p. 44

p. 50

1972 Munich Olympics Design Pictogram Design

Font Development Naming Convention

Honoring Aicher’s death

Germany 5.13.1922

1.

Introduction Otl Aicher: Who Is He? Early Life

9.1.1991

Otl Aicher

Who Is He? 5.13.1922 – 9.1.1991 Otl Aicher, also known as Otto Aicher, was a German graphic designer and typographer. He is best known for having designed pictograms for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich that proved influential on the use of stick figures for public signage, as well as designing the typeface Rotis. Aicher also co-founded the Ulm School of Design.

11

5. 13. 1922

Early Life 1920’s

1930’s

1940’s

Aicher was born in Ulm, in the south western state of BadenWürttemberg, Germany on May 13, 1922. Aicher was a classmate and friend of Werner Scholl, and through him met Werner’s family, including his brother Hans and his sister Sophie Scholl.

In 1937, Aicher was arrested for refusing to join the Hitler Youth, and consequently he was failed on his abitur (college entrance) examination in 1941. He was subsequently drafted into the German army to fight in World War II, though he tried to leave at various times.

In 1945 he deserted the army, and went into hiding at the Scholls’ house in Wutach.

In 1946, after the end of the war, Aicher began studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. In 1947, he opened his own studio in Ulm.

12

Ulm 1953 - 1968

2.

Education

Early Education Founder of Ulm School of Design

Germany

The Ulm School of Design was design college in Ulm, Germany. Founded in 1953 by Inge AicherScholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill, the latter being first Rector of the school and a former student at the Bauhaus.

16

ulm

Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm

1953 - 1968

Education In 1953, along with Inge Scholl and Max Bill, he founded the Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm), which became one of Germany’s leading educational centres for design from its founding until its closure in 1968. Faculty and students included such notable designers as Tomás Maldonado and Peter Seitz. Aicher was heavily involved in corporate branding and designed the logo for German airline Lufthansa in 1969.

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Founder of

Ulm School of Design In 1946 Inge Scholl along with Otl Aicher and a group of young intellectuals considered creating a teaching and research institution to foster the humanistic education ideal and link creative activity to everyday life. They would seek this goal in context of the cultural reconstruction of German society morally destroyed

by Nazism and World War II. The project was funded through the influx of a million marks by John McCloy of the American High Command for Germany in the post-war governing structure.

Through contacts with Max Bill and Walter Gropius, the Foundation also received financial support from the German Federal Financial Directorship and from the European Aid to Europe as well as private contributions and industry funding.

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Lufthansa Braun

3.

Aicher’s Works Lufthansa Identity Design Braun Identity Design

22

Lufthansa

Identity Design When Aicher got the task from Lufthansa in the early 1960s several airlines, such as Swissair and PanAm, had already reinvented themselves graphically, but Lufthansa held on to old and nostalgic elements of their identity that said very little of its aspirations to become a leading airline at the dawn of modern air travel. Without many guidelines Aicher set to work and one of his boldest moves was to focus on the colour yellow. Under Aicher’s gaze yellow moved to the fore and got a warmer tint. In yellow he saw qualities such as speed, safety, freshness, agility, activity and engineering. Above all he saw an opportunity to corner the market.

Otl Aicher’s graphic identity for the German airline Lufthansa is seen as one of the 20th century’s most successful and long lasting corporate rebranding exercises.

23

Lufthansa Yellow

Problematic Issues The foundations that Aicher laid in the 1960s were put to the ultimate test in the 80s when changes in the airline industry meant that air travel wasn’t a privilege only for wealthy business travellers anymore. Lufthansa had to be attractive to the vast majority of customers and then the warm yellow tone played a big role in its accessibility. Lufthansa even unveiled a largely yellow aircraft livery in the late 1980s before reverting back to the more sober blue logo.

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Right: A reversion of color was done to Lufthansa’s logo branding in order to attract more customers aside from business travellers.

Braun

Identity Design The starting point for the new design concept was a positive assessment of the potential shopper: intelligent and open minded, someone who appreciated unobtrusive products which left him or her ample freedom for personal fulfilment.

Erwin Braun, founder of Braun Radio, felt so strongly confirmed in his plans that he immediately commissioned Wagenfeld with a design assignment. Seeking further designers, Braun in late 1954 discovered the fledgling “Hochschule fuer Gestaltung� design academy in Ulm, which set out to carry on the work of the Bauhaus movement disbanded by the Nazis in 1933. With the two lecturers Hans Gugelot and Otl Aicher, a team had been created that was to go down in design history.

26

Braun

Brochure Design In only eight months, they succeeded in giving the entire Braun product line – from portable radios to music cabinets – a completely new face. The first major launch event was the 1955 Electronic Exhibition in Duesseldorf. The stand developed by Otl Aicher signalized even from afar that something fundamentally new was being offered there.

28

29

MĂźchen 1972

4.

Munich Olympics

Munich Olympics 1972 Munich Olympic Design Pictogram Design

Munich - 1972

Summer Olympics In 1966 Aicher was asked by the organisers of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich to become the Olympic Games’ lead designer. He was asked to create a design for the Olympics that complemented the architecture of the newly built stadium in Munich designed by Gßnther Behnisch. Aicher consulted with Masaru Katsumie, who had designed the previous 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

32

Munich Olympics

Logo Design Otl Aicher also helped to design the logo of the Munich Olympics.

He went through several stages with his design team before finally finding the successful emblem. One of their first ideas was to use an element of the city’s coat of arms or Mßnchner Kindl within the design which showed a monk or child pointing into the distance while clasping a book in his hand. Other ideas were to use the surrounding areas of the city, referencing the sun, mountains and landscape within the design.

35

Munich Olympics

Production Techniques The design team produced 21 sports posters to advertise the sports at the games, using the official design colours and also including the logo and “München 1972”. The design team used a technique called “posterization” for the graphics on the posters, separating the tonal qualities from the images and using the official munich colours for these games. This had to be produced manually as photoshop did not exist at this time.

36

The colours chosen for the designs of the games were selected to reflect the tones of the Alps. The mountains in blue and white would make up the palette of colours which also included green, orange and silver.

The colours were used to identify allocated themes such as media, technical services, celebrity hospitality and public functions and each had a different colour so visitors could differentiate the themes.

37

Munich Olympics

Mascot Otl Aicher also created the first official Olympic Mascot, a striped dachshund named Waldi. Waldi was modeled after Cherie von Birkenhof, a long-haired Dachshund. The mascot was produced in various forms like plush toys, stickers, posters and even buttons. Waldi’s colors were blue and stripes of the Olympics, except those of the National Socialist Party (no red or black).

38

Pictography

Design Basing his work in part on iconography for the ‘64 Games, Aicher created a set of pictograms meant to provide a visual interpretation of the sport they featured so that athletes and visitors to the Olympic village and stadium could find their way around. He created pictograms using a series of grid systems and a specific bright colour palette that he chose for these Games.

D.O.T

Pictograms 42

These designs were directly influential on the DOT pictograms, developed in 1974 by the United States Department of Transportation, which applied the same principles to standard public signage such as those for toilets and telephones; the DOT pictograms have in turn been used around the world.

43

Rotis

5.

Font Design Font Development Naming Convention

1988

Rotis Sans Serif

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 Rotis Serif

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 46

Rotis Font

Development In 1972, as the Olympics unfolded, Aicher and his family moved to the Allgäu region of Germany where they purchased a property that had been named Rotis. There, he built two studios to complement the existing buildings and established his residence and office collectively labeled as the “autonomous republic of Rotis.â€? Through the course of the 70s and 80s, Aicher maintained a healthy practice of identity, collateral, advertising and poster work for a genial range of clients, from industrial manufacturers to small towns.

Rotis Font

Naming Convention The typeface is named after Rotis, a hamlet belonging to the German town of Leutkirch im Allgäu, where Otl Aicher lived.

However, Aicher named the font “rotis”, in minuscules, since he thought of capital letters as a sign of hierarchy and oppression.

When the fonts were reissued by Monotype Imaging in 2011, though, the font names were capitalized to “Rotis”. This also affected fonts published by downstream foundries.

49

GĂźnzburg

6.

Death and After Honoring Aicher’s death

9.1.1991

Günzburg September 1, 1991 Germany

Aicher died in Günzburg on September 1, 1991, after he was struck by a vehicle while mowing the grass at Rotis. He was honoured by the Munich City Council on 6th May 2010, when a street, Otl-AicherStraße, in the City’s Borough No. 12 (Schwabing-Freimann) was named after him.

53

A Biography of

Otl Aicher Otl Aicher, born in Germany 1922, was one of the leading graphic designers of the 20th Century as well as an educator and author.

He was renowned for his structural visual systems and typography.

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