For Patrick Eley, creative director of design studio dn&co, German graphic designer Otl Aicher has long been a source of inspiration. ‘His work, particularly that of the Munich 1972 Olympics, is a design touchstone for us,’ Eley explains. ‘But his work for Isny im Allgäu is relatively little known.’
Forty years ago, the small town in southern Germany approached Aicher to create a graphic identity for its tourist board. The designer answered with a kit of 128 monochrome pictograms, in a project Eley considers to be miles ahead of its time.
And so Eley and his studio took a trip through southern Germany to blow the dust from the rare pictograms, uncovered from a ‘treasure trove of an archive’ for a new exhibition at the London Design Festival. The journey was, describes Eley, ‘the epitome of a busman’s holiday’. He was greeted by the generous hospitality of Aicher’s son Florian, and the ‘sweet beauty’ of the town itself. Both were stops along the way to a greater understanding of the man and his vision.
View of Isny, Germany
Isny, surrounded by bucolic scenery – grazing cows and charming farm houses in the foothills of the Alps – has a village feel. Aicher distills this pastoral world into a series of square landscapes, reminiscent of Polaroids, with a concrete-toned urban edge. Steeples, hillsides, forests and a curled up fox are all rendered starkly, with ‘an economy of line drawn with a mischievous twist’.
Despite their reductive aesthetic, they speak to Isny’s atmosphere. ‘Even driving into Isny, you realise the town feels familiar from Aicher’s work – you recognise its landmarks and landscapes,’ Eley offers. ‘The pictures act as vignettes, or a graphic novel, telling a comprehensive story of the place.’
Much of the studio’s own work concerns places and how to best represent them – something they were keen to express through this exhibition. ‘It explores how the pictograms work on their own and in combination with one another. It’s only when you see so much of the work in one place and in its original form, that you are able to appreciate the system Aicher created,’ Eley explains. ‘It’s flexible, playful and endlessly energetic.’
Otl Aicher’s Isny pictograms, 1960s
Viewed against the backdrop of the London Design Festival’s superfluity of far-reaching and futuristic works, Aicher’s illustrative card system seems strikingly contemporary. ‘He created a world that can be ordered and re-ordered; a system that can tell the changing stories of a place panel by panel, while remaining entirely recognisable and consistent’ – like a physical version of a Pinterest or Instagram feed.
It’s clever stuff. But Aicher’s branding programme wasn’t without controversy. About ten years after its introduction, there was an ‘outcry’ from people within the town, who felt they didn’t identify with the black and white portrayal. ‘Surrounding towns were all employing identical tourism campaigns — blue skies and the Apline ideal,’ recalls Eley. ‘The entire system was pulled in favour of something more generic.’
Little by little since the 1990s, the town has been reintroducing and reappreciating Aicher’s forward-thinking work. ‘Today, you really get a sense that it has been embraced once again,’ says Eley. ‘It backs up the universal truth that some of the best ideas are the ones that make us feel most uncomfortable at first.’
Aicher designed a series of 128 monochrome pictograms for the German town of Isny im Allgäu
Steeples, hillsides, forests and a curled up fox are all rendered with ‘an economy of line drawn with a mischievous twist’
The exhibition explores how the pictograms work on their own and in combination with one another
INFORMATION
‘Otl Aicher: Isny’ is on view until 24 September. For more information, visit the dn&co website
ADDRESS
Ground Floor Space
3 Tyers Gate
London SE1 3HX
-
Dries van Noten on why he's building a new home for craft in VeniceA year after departing the runway, Dries van Noten unveils his next chapter: the Fondazione Dries Van Noten, a newly announced cultural initiative in Venice celebrating craft in all its forms. Wallpaper meets the designer to find out why he’s not ready to retire.
-
Alexander Wessely turns the Nobel Prize ceremony into a live artworkFor the first time, the Nobel Prize banquet has been reimagined as a live artwork. Swedish-Greek artist and scenographer Alexander Wessely speaks to Wallpaper* about creating a three-act meditation on light inside Stockholm City Hall
-
At $31.4 million, this Lalanne hippo just smashed another world auction record at Sotheby’sThe jaw-dropping price marked the highest-ever for a work by François-Xavier Lalanne – and for a work of design generally
-
Out of office: The Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekIt’s wet, windy and wintry and, this week, the Wallpaper* team craved moments of escape. We found it in memories of the Mediterranean, flavours of Mexico, and immersions in the worlds of music and art
-
Each mundane object tells a story at Pace’s tribute to the everydayIn a group exhibition, ‘Monument to the Unimportant’, artists give the seemingly insignificant – from discarded clothes to weeds in cracks – a longer look
-
Out of office: The Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekThis week, the Wallpaper* team had its finger on the pulse of architecture, interiors and fashion – while also scooping the latest on the Radiohead reunion and London’s buzziest pizza
-
Out of office: The Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekIt’s been a week of escapism: daydreams of Ghana sparked by lively local projects, glimpses of Tokyo on nostalgic film rolls, and a charming foray into the heart of Christmas as the festive season kicks off in earnest
-
Wes Anderson at the Design Museum celebrates an obsessive attention to detail‘Wes Anderson: The Archives’ pays tribute to the American film director’s career – expect props and puppets aplenty in this comprehensive London retrospective
-
Meet Eva Helene Pade, the emerging artist redefining figurative paintingPade’s dreamlike figures in a crowd are currently on show at Thaddaeus Ropac London; she tells us about her need ‘to capture movements especially’
-
David Shrigley is quite literally asking for money for old rope (£1 million, to be precise)The Turner Prize-nominated artist has filled a London gallery with ten tonnes of discarded rope, priced at £1 million, slyly questioning the arbitrariness of artistic value
-
Out of office: The Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekThe rain is falling, the nights are closing in, and it’s still a bit too early to get excited for Christmas, but this week, the Wallpaper* team brought warmth to the gloom with cosy interiors, good books, and a Hebridean dram
