Hardcover: 231 pages
Publisher: Wiley VCH
Language: German
ISBN-10: 3433024871
ISBN-13: 978-3433024874
Product Dimensions: 26.5 x 24.1 x 2 cm
Release Date: 2002
Price: sold
Very light sunning to the spine; otherwise in very good condition
Author: Martin Krampen
This book presents a comprehensive and systematic analysis of 328 posters produced for the Ulmer Volkshochschule (vh Ulm) between 1946 and 1960. Set against the background of postwar Germany’s commitment to education, democracy, and public life, it clearly demonstrates how Aicher understood the poster not merely as a promotional medium, but as a device for visualizing thought.
Tracing these works chronologically, the book carefully examines the transformation of Aicher’s thinking and formal language—from words to sound, from imagery to abstraction, and from expression to system. In the preface, the vh posters are positioned as a coherent “sign system” (Zeichensystem), grounded in graphemes as basic formal units and structured through generative operations such as rotation, inversion, symmetry, and expansion.
The discussion further extends to the semantics of color, treating color not as a purely sensory element but as a carrier of meaning. Through this framework, the book offers a theoretical explanation of how form, color, and structure organize the relationship between content (Was) and mode of expression (Wie). Rather than presenting a fixed stylistic canon, this volume establishes Aicher’s work as a methodology and a process, making it a definitive reference for understanding his approach to design.
Today, this book is extremely difficult to obtain and remains an essential reference for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Otl Aicher’s graphic design.
Ulmer Volkshochschule poster designs by Otl Aicher.
Many vh-posters of Aicher contain these graphemes; Spiral, circle, and semicircle, ellipse, sine curve originating from rotative movement, triangle, rectangle, square, parallelogram and straight line from translative movement.
オトル・アイヒャーによるウルム市民大学のためのポスター集。
書記素という最小視覚コミュニケーション単位で構成され、螺旋、円、半円、楕円、回転から生じた正弦曲線、三角形、長方形、正方形、平行四辺形、平行移動による直線がこれらに含まれる。
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