A5/06: HfG Ulm
The Ulm School of Design (HfG Ulm) ranks among the world’s most important institutions of the 20th century in modernist design. What design means today cannot be understood without considering the developments at HfG. That applies not only to the design of appliances and messages in a great variety of forms, but also to the profession of designer, design education at universities, methodology and design theory – starting with the relationship between design and science and ranging up to the question of what relationship design should adopt with art and with crafts, with business and with society. This massive impact of HfG is all the more astounding when one considers that it existed for only 15 years, from 1953 to 1968.
This book clearly relates and richly illustrates the history of HfG Ulm. It contains a brief overview which also conveys the background below the formal surface. For HfG was not founded to compensate for an aesthetic deficit. On the contrary, after the terrible experiences of Nazi regime and the Second World War, its founders Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill wanted to contribute to the shaping of a new and better world.
Text: René Spitz