Graphic Design, Translated

Job:01579 Title: Graphic Design Translated (Rockport)

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Introduction

Job:01579 Title: Graphic Design Translated (Rockport)

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Such examples are intended largely for

domestic consumption, however. For

“branding” a nation globally, visual com-

munication efforts are focused outward—

and few opportunities compare to the

Olympic Games. Their sophisticated

identity systems become forever associ-

ated not just with a particular time, but

also a particular place. Otl Aicher’s highly

systematic approach to the graphics for

the 1972 Games in Munich, to take just

one example, is considered by many to be

quintessential German design, refl ecting

the rich legacies of the Bauhaus and the

Ulm School. More recently, the brand-

ing of the 2008 Summer Games in China

presented a carefully crafted image of the

country to the rest of the world, using the

Games as a “global coming out party.”

1

Yet the history of graphic design is one of

transcending international borders, too.

During the fi fteenth century, following the

invention of the printing press, ideas about

typography and illustration fi ltered quickly

from Germany into the rest of Europe—just

in time for the Italian Renaissance, a

period of great innovation in typeface and

book design. Nineteenth-century Victorian

design, a response to the excesses of

the Industrial Revolution, was adopted

widely—especially by advertisers—across

Europe and America. And the twentieth

century saw the powerful infl uences of the

Bauhaus and the International Typographic

Style spread far beyond their origins in

Western Europe, with an unprecedented

reach across the globe.

International borders are defi ned not just

by geographical and physical barriers,

however, but also by culture and language.

It was precisely these barriers that the

Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath, along

with his wife Marie Reidemeister and

illustrator Gerd Arntz, sought to overcome

with their Isotype (International System of

Typographic Picture Education) system

of pictograms. First developed during the

1920s—the First World War having brought

international issues suddenly into sharp

focus—the goal of Isotype was noth-

ing less than “a world language without

words.”

2

The extensive Isotype system,

with approximately 4,000 illustrations

credited to Arntz alone, eventually spread

throughout Europe to North America and

beyond—transcending cultural and lan-

guage barriers, and paving the way for the

information graphics with which designers

and the general public are now so familiar.

Today, of course, such transcendence

is easier than ever; international design

teams routinely collaborate using little

more than a fl uid network of Web-cruising

laptops (often via increasingly ubiquitous

wireless connections). And thanks to the

1 Quelch, John. “How Olympics Branding Is Shaping China,” 2008. http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org

2 Meggs, Philip B. & Purvis, Alston W., Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. Fourth ed. Hoboken, NJ:

John Wiley & Sons, 2006.

For centuries now, graphic design has been used to

celebrate national identities. Aspects of a country’s

values and self-image (as well as its design sensibility)

are displayed daily in its currency, postage stamps, and

all manner of offi cial documents and communications.

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Job:01579 Title: Graphic Design Translated (Rockport)

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Examples of the extensive identity system developed by Otl Aicher for the 1972 Munich Olympics

Collection of Joe Miller; Photography: Joe Miller

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