Otl Aicher and the 1972 Munich Olympics

aicher_olympics.jpg

When it comes to my top three most influential designers of all time, the list includes Josef Muller-Brockmann, Wim Crouwel, and Otl Aicher.

Otl Aicher is a legendary designer and one of the most influential graphic designers of the 20th Century. He’s responsible for many incredible designs, but he’s most famous for the work he did for the 1972 Munich Olympics. He created a beautiful and elegant design system on top of a functional grid system for the entire games that covered all visual aspects including posters, books, catalogues, flags, mascots, medals, tickets and stationery.

To honor all this work and to create an ongoing collection, this site was created. The collection includes pieces that span the entire visual identity for the games, many of which I’ve never seen before.

A few months ago an exhibit was held in San Jose California that focused on all the work done by Aicher for the games. What I would have done to have been able to see it in person. If you’re one of the unlucky souls who wasn’t able to visit, there is a Flickr set of the exhibit.

Recently, I’ve become obsessed with obtaining items from the games. Considering that the Olympics happened in the 70’s and it’s become pretty popular among the design community, most of it is hard to find and expensive. I’ve managed to get my hands on a few things, which I’ll be photographing and adding to my Flickr page very soon, but my “holy grail” is Die Spiele (The Games), a 3 volume set covering the design, execution and usage of the entire visual identity for the games. It’s a damn gold mine! I’ve seen it on ebay only 3 times in the last year and all 3 times I’ve lost the auction because the price went too high. I’ll get a set one day. Anyway, here is a nice Flickr set showing the interior pages of Die Spiele. Get a bib because you’re going to drool.

The image above is the from the excellent Blanka Flickr set. You can also see more juicy stuff here and here and in the Otl Aicher Group.        

iPhone Web Clip Icons

iPhone Web Clip Icons

With the introduction of Web Clips in the iPhone 1.1.3 a new craze as been born for Web Clip icons. You can create custom icons for sites you own, sites in subdirectories and sites to which you have no server access to, like The New York Times. Very exciting indeed! Hopefully soon everyone will get on the bandwagon and create their own icons, but in the meantime I’ve gone ahead and created some for popular sites. I’ve created icons for Flickr, FFFFound, Media Temple, Bank of America, Fandango, IMDB and The New York Times. You can download a zip file which includes all of these icons. I’ve also set up an icon for AisleOne so when you create a Web Clip to this site, it will automatically use it.

Here’s a little tip if you want to create some on your own: The default size seems to be 57×57 but it was later discovered that a 60×60 image creates a much shaper icon.