German designer Otl Aicher was both prolific and world renowned from the 1950's until his death in 1991. His simple, bright design inspired many and the offshoots of his work can be seen even today. He is most famous for his work for the 1972 Olymic games, held in Munich.
Aicher was born as “Otto” in 1922—unfavorable times for Germany, which was being sanctioned in the wake of the first World War. His home was in a small community outside of Ulm and he was raised through early childhood in a stable environment, despite the national turmoil. When Otl was 11, the Nazi's rose into power. Otl, a reader of philosophy such as Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas, was of political views that were in direct opposition to the changes taking place in his country. These views did not make him many friends at school, but Otl found a few—most importantly the Scholl family—who shared both his distaste for the Nazi regime and his thirst for intellectual fulfillment. Unlike Aicher's parents, who were unsuportive of his intellectual endeavors, the Scholls were strong proponents of education through the arts and Otl spent a great deal of time with them. He began developing his artistic abilities by drawing floor plans, and, even at the young age of 15, his surviving sketches reveal a concern for design principles and a drive toward functionality.
During World War II, Aicher struggled to stay out of the German army, but was forced to serve from 1941-1945. Even during his military career, however, Otl found time to continue studying art and philosophy due to a combination of not being trusted with duties of any import and being frequently absent from combat due to injury or illness. After the close of the war, Otl returned to Ulm and rejoined with what remained of the Scholl family. Together they formed a group to help create a new community—called the Ulmer Kreis, or “The Ulm Circle of Friends”—and worked to establish a democratic society as they rebuilt their hometown in the literal sense as well. To the end of revitalizing the region intellectually, the Ulmer Kreis instituted a Thursday Lecture and is was in designing posters for this series that Aicher had his first experience in printing.
In 1946, Aicher briefly attended the Munich Academy of Art, but ultimately rejected high art in favor of practical design. This decision was part of a larger philosophical notion that rejected aestheticism. Thus Otl destroyed all of his art and set out on the path of design. He established Büro Aicher, his first design firm, and began doing work mainly for the Ulm museum and theater, as well as the newly established Ulmer Volkshochschule—a sort of community school. In 1953, he co-founded the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm—the “Ulm School of Design.” He taught there for years and it became renowned as one of the premiere German institutions for education. While there, he was on the leading edge of design development, developing theories of corporate “identity” and writing several books on the nature and methods of design, including “The Kitchen is for Cooking,” “Critique of the Automobile,” and “The World As Design.” He also worked with a team of his best students to create corporate logos for such companies as Braun and Lufthansa. Aicher was a visiting professor at Yale and Rio de Janeiro in 1958 and 1959 respectively.
The commission that is most remembered in the career of Otl Aicher—that embodies his entire philosophy and stands out as his defining achievement—was his work designing the imagery of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Otl's design theory for this project was to create imagery that—as always—served a practical purpose (Otl is quoted as saying, “Design must surrender to practical criteria”) but also, it was important to him, after the 1936 Berlin games, that the style of his design be cheerful, clear, bright, or, in German, “heiter.” This was to contrast the harsh tone of the previous games, which took place during the Nazi regime. Bright, saturated colors were used and the forms of people were abstracted into the most basic stick men. These figures—which followed a strict pattern of lines angled vertically, horizontally, or at a 45 degree angle—were used to create a wide array of pictograms representing each sport.
In order to understand the historical significance of Aicher's Olympic work, one must be aware of the increase in international communication and the need for universally accessible information. Pictograms were a way of making information international. Moreover, Aicher's color scheme of vibrant colors, which were not so nationalistic as to prioritize the color's of Germany's flag, worked to further make the design more accessible to outsiders.
In addition to color and symbols, Aicher focused on developing a format, or what could be thought of as a rubric that would carry through all of the posters, signs, flags, tickets, brochures, and other designed elements. This rubric consisted of a grid and a set of rules defining how elements were to interact. The design allowed for an amount of play, however, rather than just creating a sense of unity in the design.
Aicher then created, as Olympic host cities traditionally did, a unique icon to supplement the Olympic rings. This symbol contrasted those before it, which took iconography from the region such as a coat of arms, by being more abstract and universal. The design was a spiraling sunburst shape that was ambiguous enough to be interpreted as a number of things (a sun or star, a flower, or a laurel) but still universally conveyed energy, playfulness, and great spirit.
Finally, multiplying the fun-loving spirit of the design, was Aicher's creation of the mascot Waldi, a multi-colored, striped dachshund.
The whole effect of Aicher's design was vibrant, energetic, and progressive.
After the Olympic design job, Aicher began expanding on the pictograms created for it, coming up with an extremely wide array of symbols representing places, actions, regulations, facilities, transport options, directions, services, warnings, and more. Hundreds of these pictograms were created and used in airports, hospitals and the like. The male and female icons used on restroom signs are derived from Aicher's work in this vein.
During the Olympic project, Aicher began thinking about moving. Eventually, he found a suitable patch of land in the Allgäu region and designed and built a working community which he called the “autonomous republic of Rotis.” This estate was a self-sufficient establishment—with it's own water supply that also generated electricity—that was home to Aicher's family and their housekeeper. Aicher's studio staff lived in nearby villages. It was in this establishment that Aicher, late in his career, designed the Rotis typeface.
Rotis was meant to be somewhere in between roman and sans serif typefaces. It was designed in levels of serif, so to speak, with serif, semi-serif, semi-sans, and sans serif styles. The semi-serif style is achieved through a slight flair where strokes end. The semi-serif style basically consists of letters with serifs on their upper halves and without on the bottoms. The lower case 'c' and 'e' are the most distinctive letterforms of the family, having strokes that do not curl up at the bottom but rather point forward. The font family was met with mixed response, being adopted by many designers but criticized as being too quirky and poorly unified by some typeface designers.
The design movements that shaped Aicher's development started with modernism and the Russian Constructivist movement, and were ultimately driven by his pragmatic ideals. In his book, The World As Design, Aicher claims, “Design must rely on the same foundations as science and technology. It too draws life from argument. Art and metaphysics lie beyond argument.” In the 1940's, grids were coming into increasing use in the design field, thanks to Emil Ruder, and it was a method that Aicher latched onto and taught in his school. Another influence was Swiss designer Max Bill, who worked closely with Aicher during his days at the Hochschule für Gestaltung.
Otl Aicher died in 1991 after a trafic accident. He was 71 years old.
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