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72: Otl Aicher and the Munich Olympiad
27 January 2007
Montreal, Barcelona, Sydney…all Olympic cities
In 2012 London will host the Olympic Games. Sites are being cleared; architecture is becoming design-and-build; budgets are being exceeded. But what can we learn from what has gone before?
In 1967 a team was assembled under the guidance of German graphic designer, Otl Aicher, to oversee the entire design output for the 1972 Munich Olympics. For the next six years a team of up to 40 people produced a body of work of seminal importance, elements of which have now been absorbed into the mainstream of graphic design.
London graphic design consultancy, Bibliothèque, agreed to exhibit a large proportion of its extraordinary collection of posters, books, manuals, badges and other rare items at 72 Wigmore Street from 15 February to 15 March 2007.
Not only was the entire exhibition built using the 606 Universal Shelving System but Otl Aicher sat on the other side of the desk when a 23-year-old Dieter Rams went to Braun for a job interview in 1955. What would have happened if Aicher, Erwin Braun and Fritz Eichler had turned him down?
Bibliothèque
The Telegraph
Wallpaper*
Eye
Designboom
City of Sound
Computer Love
Things to look at