Communication Design in Germany – An Overview
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For a long time, German communication design has been overshadowed in terms of public awareness by the country’s product design and industrial design, which have always been highly successful. However, its image has changed fundamentally over the last few years. This has happened firstly because the everyday necessities involved in the communication of information have made its functions more multifaceted. And secondly because close cooperation between the creative disciplines of graphic design and product design now has to be viewed as essential to more than just business success. Today, no product, whether shoes, racquets or skis, is imaginable without perfectly matched graphic design. Sustainable communication Nonetheless – and this is where the traditional strength of German communication design comes to the fore – logos, pictograms, fonts, series and systems often only demonstrate their sustainability when they are given the chance to make an impact over several decades: Examples include the Deutsche Bank logo, which dates back to 1974 and was designed by Anton Stankowski; Otl Aicher’s pictograms, which were originally created for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and are still stylistically influential to the present day; the DIN font, which is familiar to anyone who has ever driven in Germany from motorway and place name signs (and was also used on German car number plates until the end of 2000); and the famous “rainbow series” of book covers designed for Suhrkamp by Willy Fleckhaus in 1962. All these great pieces of design are exemplars of outstanding, enduring communication design from Germany.
Meeting everyday needs The considerable achievements of communication design make it possible for us to find our way, read text and identify places and facilities, therefore fulfilling important everyday functions. Ideally, they enable us to perceive information intuitively, automatically take the right route and recognise the products we want to buy at a glance. In short: communication design helps us to immediately locate the things we need in order to understand the world around us. Good communication design serves us as we navigate through the daily jungle of information, timetables, the Internet, the worlds of branding and event information.It is only when we are led astray in the physical or digital worlds, fonts are illegible for no good reason or we find ourselves confronted with signs that do not tell us anything, in other words when surfaces lack a communicative dimension, that we realise how much intelligence is invested in typography, signage systems, graphics, digital design and corporate visual identities. The nucleus: graphic design Graphic design is regarded as the nucleus of communication design and is frequently referred to as synonymous with it. New ways of seeing and forms of reception eventually influence the discipline of graphic design and the fields in which it is customarily deployed, as Fons Hickmann has shown in his book Beyond Graphic Design. It is above all German editorial design, as it is known, which encompasses the design of magazines, newspapers, books, etc., that has emancipated itself and is attracting international attention. The work of Mike Meiré illustrates this perfectly, as does that of Mirko Borsche, the long-serving art director of the Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine, which was for a considerable period the only weekly supplement published by any of the numerous large German daily newspapers in a magazine format. The same is true of editorial design for specialist magazines as well – as can be seen from the work done by Atelier Bernd Kuchenbeiser for the architecture magazine Baumeister or the relaunch of the design magazine form masterminded by the agency ade hauser lacour in 2006. Clients in the artsCutting-edge posters have always been closely associated with cultural events and messages. Certainly, clients in the arts often tend to give designers more of a free rein than those in private industry. This is shown clearly by the images produced by Surface for the Forsythe Company (contemporary ballet) and the German pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale, and – not least – the poster campaign conceived by the Double Standards agency for the Theater Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, which featured young boxers in a playful reference to the venue’s abbreviated name HAU (both the stem of the German verb hauen, meaning “to hit, to bash, to smash”, and its singular imperative).It looked at one time as though the triumphal progress of the CD and, to an even greater extent, the mp3 file meant record cover design, a once flourishing field of activity, was doomed to wither away. However, there is now an ever-growing community of reborn vinyl enthusiasts, a phenomenon that has inspired a renaissance in the design of “record sleeves”. HORT and Bureau Mario Lombardo, both based in Berlin and mainly active in the field of corporate design respectively print and magazine design, are among the German trendsetters in this field. |
Andrej Kupetz
is Managing Director and Technical Director of the German Design Council and writes for various design magazines, including design report and form.
Stephan Ott
works as a freelance author, journalist and lecturer. He has been in charge of communications for the German Design Council since early 1999.
Photo “Autobahnschild” © Marcus Walter / PIXELIO
Copyright: Goethe-Institut e.V., Online-Redaktion
Any questions about this article? Please write to us!
online-redaktion@goethe.de
September 2008
is Managing Director and Technical Director of the German Design Council and writes for various design magazines, including design report and form.
Stephan Ott
works as a freelance author, journalist and lecturer. He has been in charge of communications for the German Design Council since early 1999.
Photo “Autobahnschild” © Marcus Walter / PIXELIO
Copyright: Goethe-Institut e.V., Online-Redaktion
Any questions about this article? Please write to us!
online-redaktion@goethe.de September 2008
