The World as Design

Otl Aicher (1922 1991) was an outstanding personality in modern design, he was a co–founder of the legendary Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG), the Ulm School of Design, Germany. His works since the fifties of the last century in the field of corporate design and his pictograms for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich are major achievements in the visual communication of our times.

Otl Aicher s writings are explorations of the world, a substantive part of his work. In moving through the history of thought and design, building and construction, he assures us of the possibilities of arranging existence in a humane fashion. As ever he is concerned with the question of the conditions needed to produce a civilized culture. These conditions have to be fought for against apparent factual or material constraints and spiritual and intellectual substitutes on offer.

Otl Aicher likes a dispute. For this reason, the volume contains polemical statements on cultural and political subjects as well as practical reports and historical exposition. He fights with productive obstinacy, above all for the renewal of Modernism, which he claims has largely exhausted itself in aesthetic visions; he insists the ordinary working day is still more important than the cultural Sunday .

Wolfgang Jean Stock

9 preface by sir norman foster

10 introduction

16 crisis of modernism

28 doing without symbols

36 aesthetic existence

40 the third modernism

62 charles eames

66 hans gugelot

77 flying machines by paul mc cready

85 bauhaus and ulm

94 architecture as a reflection of the state

113 the non–usable useful item

124 the signature

132 intelligent building

138 my workspace does not yet exist

143 difficulties for architects and designers

150 appearance

167 graphic designers space to be themselves

175 a new typeface

179 the world as design

190 afterword

192 sources