Munich 72 Collected
A personally collected archive showcasing the vast visual identity created by Otl Aicher and his Dept. XI team for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.
During my first year as a graphic designer I read an article in a design magazine that first brought to my attention Otl Aicher's work for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.
I was struck by the bold colours, the systematic design approach, the strong typographic layouts of the cultural events, the simplistic information design of the pictogram system and of course a dachshund named Waldi.
I went online to find out more. I loved the fact that booklets, passes, posters, uniforms and more were all considered down to the smallest detail. The breadth of the visual identity for the games was immense, I'd never seen anything like it before.
A few purchases from a certain online auction site and I was hooked. That was almost twenty years ago.
Since then I've collected a large part of it (around 600-700 pieces), including some quite rare items. I've collated everything from posters, literature, mascots, tickets and personal identification, to many of the souvenir items (everything from ceramics to tea-towels) created for the Games.
Munich 72 Collected is my personally collected archive.
One of the cultural mile-stones in the field of visual communication, the design of the XXth Olympiad successfully articulates to multi-lingual and mutli-cultural audiences. Something which I believe hadn't been done so successfully before.
The pictogram system which was devised by Aicher and Gerhard Joksch, initially for The Games, is the perfect example of simplistic information design. Having pointed the way for nearly 50 years they have become the universal standard.