Congress Learning from HfG Ulm
Conference Virtues and limitations o Otl Aicher's design approach
The last important design project of Otl Aicher, German graphic designer and Ulm School of Design main co-founder, was Bilbao's subway signage system. This exemplar mass transport information design project was realized thanks to the special relationship with British architect Norman Foster that was regularly visiting Aicher in the 1980s in Rotis, a small village in Ravensburg district, Germany, where Aicher based his studio after 1972. Aicher was seeing typography (text composition, surface layout) as bi-dimensional architecture. Type design (designing letterforms) was also part of his practice; but with some distance, his iconic Rotis typeface can be seen as a questionable production. His collection of essays ‹The World as Design› remains the most remarkable attempt in defining design practice and its autonomy, the clearest critique to date of the Bauhaus myth: a decisive read for anyone interested in the field of design. What can it be designing daily with Aicher & Foster in mind as an architect / graphic designer / type designer?