Die Schwingen des Kranichs – 50 Jahre Lufthansa-Design / The Wings of the Crane – 50 Years ofLufthansa Design

The basic features of Deutsche Lufthansa’s present corporate

image emerged almost 45 years ago. It was created by Otl Aicher,

one of the principal figures at the now legendary Hochschule für

Gestaltung in Ulm. Another work by Aicher that spoke to the whole

of Germany, as it were (and still does, in rudiments), is the 1972 corporate

image for the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen. The corporate

image he created for the Olympic Games in Munich, which made

an essential contribution to the ambience of the event, has also remained

memorable.

Since the ideas developed by Aicher and his colleagues were

implemented in the early sixties, the airline has been seen worldwide

as a perfect example of a consistently developed corporate

image. Aicher based himself on ideas from the Deutscher Werkbund

and took the company’s entire inventory into consideration:

'house colours, pictorial and typographic logos, typeface, graphic

and typographic rules and standards, photographic style, quality

of support materials, packaging, exhibition systems, architectural

characteristics, forms (design) of interior furnishings and equipment,

style of work and service clothes.'

As well as Otl Aicher, numerous other product and graphic designers,

fashion designers and advertising and marketing agencies

have worked for Lufthansa. They include Otto Firle, whose ideas

led to the crane logo, Hartmut Esslinger and his company frog

design, Priestman & Goode, Müller Romca Industriedesign, Don

Wallance, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Hans Theo Baumann, Nick Roericht,

Wolfgang Karnagel, Topel & Pauser and the bhar design practice,

fashion designers Uli Richter, Ursula Tautz and Werner Machnick,

Jürgen Weiss, Gabriele Strehle and the Jobis company as well as

the agencies Zintzmeyer & Lux, the Peter Schmidt Group, Ogilvy &

Mather, Young & Rubicam, Spiess/Ermisch/Abel, Springer & Jacoby,

McCann & Erickson and Fanghänel & Lohmann.

An exhibition of the same name at the Museum für Angewandte

Kunst in Frankfurt deals with the same subject as the book.

The internationally known architecture and design historian

Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum

in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. Since 1995 he

has built up a new design department in the Museum for Applied

Arts in Frankfurt; in addition to his museum work he teaches history

of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung

in Offenbach. Volker Fischer is already represented in Edition Axel

Menges by books on Stefan Wewerka, Richard Meier, the Commerzbank

in Frankfurt by Norman Foster and Hall 3 of Messe

Frankfurt am Main by Nicholas Grimshaw.