In 1972 Otl Aicher's groundbreaking pictogram designs for the Munich Olympics were released. At the same time in Australia, Brian Sadgrove designed a series of stamps commemorating the same event. These two design events (the latter in particular) had a significant impact on a ten year old growing up in outer Melbourne. They influenced me to become a graphic designer.
The graphic abstraction of the human form, the dynamic layout configuration and the artful use of negative space and the whole 'cool European' reduced, minimal aesthetic employed by both Aicher1 and Sadgrove sent a shiver down my spine. I still find Aicher's pictograms quite remarkable, as did the Olympic organisation – they used them again for the 1976 Montreal Olympics (although I now think that Masaru Katsumie and Yoshiro Yamashita's pictograms for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics are perhaps even better and more memorable). I find the information design component of my job (you know: signage systems, identity/branding style guides and the like) strangely indebted and connected to my earlier experience of licking the back of a stamp featuring Sadgrove's beautiful reductionist work back in 1972 and thinking 'wow, what is this?!'.
Notes
1. Aicher also went on to design the 'hybrid' typeface Rotis, which combined elements of both sans-serif and serif typefaces.
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