Hasta La Ideas

As we prepare our special Olympics issue, one of the most interesting finds we’ve encountered is the official Munich ’72 merchandise catalogue, courtesy of Ian McLaren who worked for Otl Aicher’s design team. Here, the famous ‘wreath of rays’ emblem is applied to a whole range of products, revealing that the Munich Games was as keen to capitalise on its image as any modern Olympics…

The catalogue was made in 1971 by the Hamburg company, Fahnen-Fleck. The firm produced some of the Munich ’72 promotional items contained within (flags, banners, embroidered badges and textiles) and designed everything else through its newly formed Olympic Souvenir department, headed up by Sigrid Schüler.

The company’s current owner Andreas Fleck in fact provided the PDF of the 1972 catalogue you see here (while McLaren kindly let us photograph his original copy for the forthcoming issue). Fleck tells us that his father Heinz was an adviser to the Olympic Committee in Munich, and responsible for the marketing, design and distribution of the official souvenirs. Olympic Souvenir then licensed other German companies to make the products.

According to McLaren’s correspondence with former Munich colleague Nick Roericht, the only souvienir designed directly by Aicher’s studio was Waldi, the official mascot of the Games. Waldi’s creation was overseen by Elena Winschermann. Roericht recalls that Aicher apparently agreed to design the mascot “because of its symbolic statement,” but that, “he couldn’t get used to the idea of designing all these unfunctional things”. Hence Waldi appears in the official Munich Design Manual, but the other souvenirs do not.

Compared to the sports, cultural and ‘artists’ posters produced for the ’72 Olympics, the famous pictograms and the sunburst emblem, the merchandise reveals a different side to the Munich Games, but one that ultimately remained under the control of Aicher’s design guidelines for using the logotype and symbol.

But for me it’s certainly an eye-opener that one of the Games most celebrated for its rational, modernist approach, with its inflections of the Bauhaus and the Ulm school directly influencing Aicher’s Munich studio model, also found a space for inflatable Waldis, vinyl records, umbrellas, tumblers, aprons, matchbooks, keyrings, even ceramic candle holders.

Aicher’s aim had been to bring a sense of lightness and optimism to the Munich Games, ridding the spectre of the 1936 Olympics in the process. So in a way, while the commercial reality of the Games is on show in the catalogue, it’s also its  playful side Games, epitomised in the page of Waldi-related material (a nod to the wooden toys of the Bauhaus), which comes through.

The August issue of CR, our Olympics special, features an interview with Munich designer Ian McLaren. The exhibition Munich ’72 is on now at the Herbert Read Gallery at UCA Canterbury. CR’s Olympics issue is out July 25

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Adidas has released this simple but striking campaign as part of its Olympic advertising. Based around the tagline Take the Stage, it features photographic portraits of top British athletes…

The campaign, which is created by Sid Lee, so far consists of a series of posters and films. The first set of posters (one shown above) has been visible around London for a little while now, and features just the tagline. A second set was released this week, and are shown below: these expand on the idea, featuring individual messages such as ‘Take the Crown’, ‘Take the Pressure’ etc.

A TV spot, shown below, continues the theme, and is accompanied by a series of shorter films on the individual athletes. There will also be further elements to the campaign released in the coming weeks.

Credits:
Agency: Sid Lee
ECD: Kris Manchester
Creatives: Dan Brooks, Dan Chandler
Designer: Richard Hooker
Photographer: Dean Rogers
Art buyer: Bianca Anton
Production company (Stills): 24 Productions
Director (TV): Isaiah Seret
Production company (TV): Jimmy Lee/Prettybird

Da tenere a mente quando tornerà in vendita su Etsy.
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Loro sono i Golden Cosmos.

In anticipation of the upcoming IDSA 2012 International Conference, Core77 had an opportunity to chat with Conference Chair Charles Austen Angell about his decade of service with the IDSA, visioneering and advice for young designers! As he shares in his statement about this year’s conference theme, The Future Is…

The Future Is… about us. How we work, laugh, learn, cooperate, connect and stay healthy. Topic experts will address the dramatically changing playing field in business and technology in a format where attendees contribute to the understanding of the information.

We are in times of extreme economic stress and yet the rules of business and commerce keep changing at an almost impossible rate. How do the best stay ahead, and what is design’s role in addressing change?

Don’t forget to REGISTER TODAY for the conference…regular registration closes this Saturday, July 14th at midnight ET.

IDSA International 2012 Conference
The Future Is…
August 15-18, 2012
The Westin Boston Waterfront – Boston, MA

Core77: You’ve been part of the IDSA leadership as early as 2001 and are the current Chair-elect of the IDSA board—what motivates your service and gets you excited about the role of the IDSA?

Charles Austen Angell: I get excited about the community of designers and how that community can dramatically and positively influence the discipline of design. I want to see the community grow and benefit the careers of more designers. As an association, IDSA is a different animal than the other trends connecting people professionally. IDSA is a true community that spans the history of our field. It is made of a rich network of deep relationships that you simply can’t build with tweets or Facebook posts. In our fifteen minutes of fame culture, it is essential to have an association that rises above trend and spans the decades. IDSA was there when we were students and it will be there when we retire. True creativity requires perspective.

This year’s theme encourages conference participants to write “the future”. What are some of the most important areas for industrial designers to be exploring when considering the industry’s future and why?

Design now moves at the speed and cadence of business. This is a part of the success of design within the business world, however there is a cost. The scope and span of design thinking has become somewhat clipped into shopping seasons, and fiscal quarters. This shift means we talk less about the big picture, we spend less effort “visioneering” and less time thinking about how it all comes together. Futurama, autorama, the kitchen of the future and World Expos—in the past designers flooded society with visions of a better society and more positive world. This is the level of positive imaginative dialog we want to provoke moving forward.

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