Guidelines and Standards for the Visual Design: The Games of the XX Olympiad Munich 1972
Otl Aicher
Almost a quarter of a century after the end of National Socialism in Germany, Otl Aicher was commissioned to design the “cheerful” Olympic Games in Munich 1972. He systematically and scientifically approached this task and liberated visual communication from national pathos by reducing it to the essential in the Bauhaus sense: the use. The manual, completed in 1967, con-tains a flexible system of colors, forms and fonts that enabled Aicher’s team and partners to “play freely” and saved “unnecessary preparatory work and time-consuming detailed decisions”.With the use of this kind of visual gram-mar more than 100 design areas were developed. They succeeded in creating an extraordinary broad impact of the appearance and setting new standards for branding and corporate design. Munich 1972 is still regarded as the most successful design project of all the Olympic Games.
Otl Aicher (1922–1991) was an internation-ally acclaimed graphic designer and educa-tor, renowned for his corporate identity work, visual communication systems, and typography. With concise corporate designs for commercial enterprises, for example the Deutsche Lufthansa, his visual communication system for the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, and in particular as co-founder (together with Max Bill) and rector of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm – an experimental design school in the spirit of the Bauhaus – he achieved a high reputation worldwide.
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