The series of sports posters was a novelty in the history of Olympic posters. For the first time, poster motifs showed all the sports disciplines that were contested at the Olympic Games. However, the posters did not serve as advertising for the individual sports competitions, as was usually the case. Rather, they fulfilled a representative function. They embodied the Olympic Games as a whole and pictorially underscored the ‘cheerful games’ of Munich in a modern and democratic Germany.
The fact that Aicher was a team player can be seen in the small print identifying the employees; in the poster for the marathon, they secretly incorporated their silhouettes into the foliage of the forest.
The team around Otl Aicher – Gerhard Joksch, Henri Wirthner, György Nagy, Gabriele Pée and Nanke Claassen – used reportage photographs as the basis for their designs. In each case, a motif was selected that showed the athletes in a posture typical of their respective discipline. This focus on the characteristic features of each sport made the poster an internationally recognisable symbol.
After removing all distracting elements, the colours of the edited photos were altered. Each poster was assigned a key colour, which was combined with two to four additional colours from the Olympic colour spectrum. This allowed the posters to blend seamlessly into the overall look of the Games and gave them their serial character.
Design is fine. History is mine. 