Otl Eicher

Otl Eicher (1922-1991) was a German designer and educator, who could be cited as a major influence in the development of corporate identity and visual communication. Eicher worked on many major landmark projects including corporate identity programs for Lufthansa, lighting manufacturer ERCO and FSB. His identity program for the 1972 Summer Olympics is currently enjoying a fashionable renaissance with screen printed posters and printed items exchanging hands on Ebay for hundreds of dollars. This program almost singlehandedly set the modern precedents for design of pictograms used in public signage and orientation systems, a process that Eicher would develop with ERCO and other future clients. As an educator Eicher was one of the founders of the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Ulm, a radical design school, exploring many themes effecting West Germany in the post war economic miracle years of the 1950s and 60s and espousing the philosophy that the results of the design process needed to have a social responsibility.