the world as design

Otl Aicher (1922-1991) was an outstanding personality in modern design and a co-founder of the legendary Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG), the Ulm School of Design in Germany. His works since the 1950s 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 and 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. 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 welcomes a dispute.