Otto "Otl" Aicher (; 13 May 1922 – 1 September 1991) was a German graphic designer and

typographer Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), a ...

. Aicher co-founded and taught at the influential Ulm School of Design. He is known for having led the design team of the

1972 Summer Olympics The 1972 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad () and commonly known as Munich 1972 (german: München 1972), was an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from 26 August to 11 September 19 ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

, and for overseeing the creation of its prominently used system of

pictogram A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and ...

s. Aicher also developed the

Rotis Rotis is a typeface developed in 1988 by Otl Aicher, a German graphic designer and typographer. In Rotis, Aicher explores an attempt at maximum legibility through a highly unified yet varied typeface family that ranges from full serif, glyphic, a ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

Early life and career

Aicher was born in Ulm, in the south-western state of

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

, on 13 May 1922. Aicher was a classmate and friend of Werner Scholl, and through him met Werner's family, including his siblings

Hans Hans may refer to: __NOTOC__ People * Hans (name), a masculine given name * Hans Raj Hans, Indian singer and politician ** Navraj Hans, Indian singer, actor, entrepreneur, cricket player and performer, son of Hans Raj Hans ** Yuvraj Hans, Punjab ...

and Sophie Scholl, both of whom would be executed in 1943 for their membership in the White Rose resistance movement in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. Like the Scholls, Aicher was strongly opposed to the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

movement. He was arrested in 1937 for refusing to join the

Hitler Youth The Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. ...

, 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 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, 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 Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. In 1947, he opened his own studio in Ulm. In 1952 he married

Inge Scholl Inge Aicher-Scholl (11 August 1917 – 4 September 1998), born in present-day Crailsheim, Germany, was the daughter of Robert Scholl, mayor of Forchtenberg, and elder sister of Hans and Sophie Scholl, who studied at the University of Muni ...

, the older sister of Werner, Hans, and Sophie.

Ulm School of Design

In 1953, along with Inge Scholl and

Max Bill Max Bill (22 December 1908 – 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer. Early life and education Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversmit ...

, 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 Tomás Maldonado (25 April 1922 – 26 November 2018) was an Argentine painter, designer and thinker, considered one of the main theorists of design theory of the legendary Ulm Model, a design philosophy developed during his tenure (1954–1967) ...

Peter Seitz Peter Seitz (born 1931) is a graphic designer, author, teacher and business owner who served as the first design director at The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), and helped establish the graphic design program at the Minneapolis College of A ...

, and Anthony Froshaug. Aicher was heavily involved in

corporate branding Corporate branding refers to the practice of promoting the brand name of a corporate entity, as opposed to specific products or services. The activities and thinking that go into corporate branding are different from product and service branding ...

and considered one of the pioneers of

Corporate design A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...

. Among others he was influential to the corporate identity of the company

Braun Braun is a common surname, originating from the German word for the color brown. The name is the 22nd most common family name in Germany. Many German emigrants to the United States also changed their name to ''Brown'' (''see Brown (surname)''). ...

and he designed the logo for German airline

Lufthansa Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), commonly shortened to Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. When combined with its subsidiaries, it is the second- largest airline in Europe in terms of passengers carried. Lufthansa is one of the five founding ...

in 1969.

1972 Munich Olympics

In 1966 Aicher was asked by the organisers of the

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

Günther Behnisch Günther, Guenther, Ginther, Gunther, and the variants Günter, Guenter, Guenther, Ginter, and Gunter, are Germanic names derived from ''Gunthere, Gunthari'', composed of '' *gunþiz'' "battle" (Old Norse '' gunnr'') and ''heri, hari'' "army". G ...

. Aicher consulted with Masaru Katsumie, who had designed the previous 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. Basing his work in part on iconography for the 1964 Games, Aicher created a set of

s 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. These designs were directly influential on the

DOT pictograms The DOT pictograms are a set of fifty pictograms used to convey information useful to travelers without using words. Such images are often used in airports, train stations, hotels, and other public places for foreign tourists, as well as being ea ...

, developed in 1974 by the

United States Department of Transportation The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the President of the United States and ...

, 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. The series of pictograms he created was not a simple task; the goal of each pictogram was to function as a clear sign of the activity it represented while simultaneously maintaining its universal comprehension. 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

Münchner Kindl Münchner Kindl, meaning "Munich child" in the Bavarian dialect, is the name of the symbol on the coat of arms of the city of Munich. History This symbol has been the coat-of-arms of Munich since the 13th century. The figure portrayed was origi ...

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. Finally the "Strahlenkranz" was created, a garland which represented the sun but also the five Olympic rings merged in a spiral shape. Designer Coordt von Mannstein reworked Aicher's original design through a mathematical calculation to amalgamate the garland and spiral together to get the final design. 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 around the stadium and village. Uniforms were colour-coordinated to represent these themes, the Olympic staff could be identified as working for a particular department by the colour they were wearing. Aicher used the typeface Univers for the Olympic designs. 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 in a manual process and using the official munich colours for these games. The first of these posters was a poster of the Olympic stadium which became the official poster for these games. The posters were displayed all around the city of Munich and around the Olympic sites. Posters were hung in twos alongside posters designed by famous artists chosen to represent this Olympics such as

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

, R. B. Kitaj,

Tom Wesselmann Thomas K. Wesselmann (February 23, 1931 – December 17, 2004) was an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement who worked in painting, collage and sculpture. Early years Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati. From 1949 to 1951 he atte ...

and Allen Jones. He also created the first official Olympic Mascot, a striped

dachshund The dachshund ( or ; German: " badger dog"), also known as the wiener dog, badger dog, and sausage dog, is a short-legged, long-bodied, hound-type dog breed. The dog may be smooth-haired, wire-haired, or long-haired, and comes in a variety o ...

named

Waldi Waldi () was the first official Olympic mascot created for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. He was a dachshund, a popular breed of dog from Germany. The course of the Athletics at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Men's marathon, marathon was desi ...

. File:Olympic games 1972 basketball 0501.JPG, File:Piktogramm Schwimmer an der Muenchner Olympia Schwimmhalle.JPG, File:Olympic games 1972 pictogramms olympic station 0877 a.jpg, File:Archery pictogram white (1972 Summer Olympics style).svg, File:Olympic parc munich pictogramms ice rink 0651.JPG, File:Olympic games 1972 cycling 0533.JPG, File:Olympic games 1972 gymnastics 0532.JPG,

Later work

In 1980 Otl Aicher became a consultant of the kitchen manufacturer

Bulthaup Bulthaup (legally: ''Bulthaup GmbH & Co. KG'', stylized as bulthaup) is a German kitchen manufacturer headquartered in Aich, Bodenkirchen, close to Landshut in Lower Bavaria. It has a headcount of 530, and records revenues of around 120 million eur ...

. He created the

font family in 1988, naming it after the location of his domicile and design studio near the rural town of Leutkirch im Allgäu. His typeface is still used by Bulthaup today. Aicher also designed logos for the

University of Konstanz The University of Konstanz (german: Universität Konstanz) is a university in the city of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Its main campus was opened on the Gießberg in 1972 after being founded in 1966. The university is German ...

and the

Munich Airport Munich International Airport- Franz Josef Strauß (german: link=no, Flughafen München) is an international airport serving Munich and Upper Bavaria. It is the second-busiest airport in Germany in terms of passenger traffic after Frankfurt A ...

among others.

Death and after

Aicher died in Günzburg on 1 September 1991, after he was struck by a motorbike while mowing the grass at Rotis.Rathgeb, Markus. Otl Aicher. New York: Phaidon Press Inc., 2008. Aicher was honored by the Munich City Council on 6 May 2010, when a street, Otl-Aicher-Straße, in the City's Borough No. 12 (Schwabing-Freimann) was named after him. The Leutkirch Realschule also bears his name.

Publications

Aicher wrote many books on design and other subjects, including: * "The Kitchen is for Cooking" (1982) * "Walking in the Desert" (1982) * "Critique of the Automobile" (1984) * "Inside the War" (1985) * "The World as Design" (Die Welt 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, * Rathgeb, Markus: ''Otl Aicher - Design as a method of action''. PhD thesis at The University of Reading, 2001 * Rathgeb, Markus: ''Otl Aicher''. Phaidon Press, 2006, . (Monograph)

References

External links

Biography
at linotype.com
Otl Aicher, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York City

72:Otl Aicher and the Munich Olympiad
– February 2007 museum exhibition

at 72 exhibition
Otl Aicher
otl-aicher.de
München braucht eine Otl-Aicher-Straße
Project to honor the work of Otl Aicher as a communication designer in Munich.

2008 exhibition in San Jose, California
Official repository of Otl Aicher's pictograms
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aicher, Otl 1922 births 1991 deaths White Rose members German designers German graphic designers Information graphic designers Design researchers Design educators German architecture writers Logo designers German typographers and type designers Road incident deaths in Germany People from Ulm Academy of Fine Arts, Munich alumni Ulm School of Design faculty German Army personnel of World War II Deserters