otl aicher

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It’s important I suppose to write about one’s design inspirations.  Sometimes, it can feel like I’ve completely absorbed them and don’t need to revisit them, and then, I do and discover something completely new. Or, more often, I realize that I’ve creatively drifted without realizing it, and spend a long night staring at design books, trying to find my equilibrium.

Otl Aicher was someone I came to both early and late.   Later when I knew his work as a designer, I became mildly obsessed with him, as though having his Munich ’72 Olympic iconography as my bedroom wallpaper as a kid somehow connected us across the vast spans of time.  I invested more relevance in his than perhaps is necessary, but every time, his graphics still represent an ideal I aspire to.

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