Otl Aicher

Biography

Founded in 1953, the 'Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm’ (HfG) represented beyond Dieter Rams, Max Bill and Hans Gugelot another designer personality, who would emerge as a key figure in post-war German design in the following decades. With his designs, Otl Aicher made important contributions to the German design after 1949. After the end of World War II, he finally began an apprenticeship as a sculptor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

Otto, called Otl Aicher, was born in Ulm in May 1922. Due to his membership in the 'Bündische Jugend' Aicher was imprisoned in 1937. As he refused to join the ’Hitler-Jugend’ in 1941, he was deprived of his graduation certificate. Only two years later he opened his first graphic design office in Ulm. At the same time he began with his plannings for the ‚Hochschule für Gestaltung’, which he founded in 1953 together with his wife, the sister of Sophie and Hans Scholl, Inge Aicher-Scholl and the former Bauhaus student Max Bill.

In addition to teaching at the HfG, Aicher specialized primarily in the practical field of graphic design. In 1962, for example, he revised Lufthansa's corporate design: Aicher retained the crane designed by Otto Firle, but reduced it to its basic forms and added the now unmistakable Lufthansa lettering in Helvetica, as well as the characteristic yellow-blue color scheme.