The World as Design

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Otl Aicher

Ernst & Sohn/John Wiley & Sons, Berlin, English, 1998, 1994

Nonfiction, Product/Industrial Design

ISBN: 9783433024041

From the Publisher. 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. 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.”

On 3 book lists

Jeffrey Bernett

On Jeffrey Bernett’s Book List

Otl Aicher founded the Ulm School of Design, which became Germany’s leading educational center for design during the 1950s and 1960s. Aicher was heavily involved in corporate branding for a number of important companies of the era, including designing the logo for German airline Lufthansa, and is probably best known for being the lead designer for the 1972 Munich Olympics. A complete and broad thinker of design.

Fritz Frenkler

On Fritz Frenkler’s Book List

Another standard work on industrial design that should be consulted occasionally.

Sam Hecht

On Sam Hecht’s Book List

I have read this book about four times—and at different times of my life. In my opinion it should be read by every design student. While I was a professor at Karlsruhe University I was surprised that few of my students had heard of it, let alone the writer and designer, Otl Aicher. Why is it so important? I believe that too many designers have lost the ability to realize that projects are ultimately for people—not the company. Aicher explains this very clearly, and as his rationale is very cutting, it would be hard to argue with.

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