This article forms part of the Decorative and Applied Arts Encyclopedia, a master reference hub providing a structured overview of design history, materials, movements, and practitioners.
Otl Aicher is a long-standing specialist in corporate identity, and much of his work is characterised by a commitment to a pure line and a geometric form. As employed in the use of his pictograms.
Education
From 1946 to 1947, Otl Aicher (1922 – 1991) attended the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. The following year, he founded a studio at Ulm’s highly influential and radical Hochschule Für Gestaltung and became closely affiliated with it. From 1954 to 1965, he was a co-founder and lecturer in visual communication and served as vice-chancellor from 1962 to 1964.
Influence & Style
Max Bill, the institution’s first director and a Bauhaus graduate, significantly impacted him. His graphic design work exudes order, geometric organisation, discipline, and a functionalist ethos. While at Ulm, he worked with Hans Gugelot, another important figure at the university, on Braun products’ design and display.
1972 Munich Olympics
Aicher is best known for his graphic design programme for the 1972 Munich Olympics, including everything from uniforms and interiors to maps, street signs, and pictograms denoting individual sporting events. He also designed corporate identity graphics for Lufthansa (1962–4), Frankfurt Airport (1967–70), König Pilsner (1975–6), and Erco (1975–7), among others.
Later Years
Otl Aicher joined the kitchen company Bulthaup as a consultant in 1980. In 1988, he designed the Rotis font family, named after Rotis’ home in Leutkirch am Allgäu, where Aicher lived and maintained his workshop. Today, Bulthaup still uses this font family.
He also developed the logos for the University of Konstanz and Munich Airport, the latter of which uses a simple sans-serif font containing the letter M.
Sources
Woodham, J. M. (2006). A dictionary of modern design. Oxford University Press.
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