Information about Otl Aicher?

[Michael Hernan]

I have just finished reading 'typographie' today. I have been working through it this last week. First-off, the English translation in Rotis Roman *wasn't* difficult to read. It has been the first time I had read Rotis (Roman) in any quantity. There is an example in the book later on which shows the comparison between Rotis Roman and Times Roman and it becomes clear that Times is a significant influence from the Roman end of the scale.

The book lays out a *Big* argument about the adoption of capitalis by the Romans (and later Renaisance) with the usage of Capitalis' drawing an association to vacuous superiority. This is both interesting and enlightening as this had not been apparent, though subconsciously obvious.

Typographie, the Book is a fine example of 'Total Design' in the true Dutch sense, where all aspects of the design work in a holistic way (typeface, illustration style page make-up). The only aspect of the book design that bugged me was a really tight gutter margin and some bad column return alliterations.

I have always admired what I have seen of Aicher's work and have his Sahara Desert book and essays (English and German) so am looking forward to the book from Markus Rathgeb.

Rotis as a font is a remarkable undertaking. I really like the concept of legibility being increased upon the increased distinction between letterforms and admire the notion of being inspired by pen-forms and early type design, especially the Garamond lowercase e (Carolingian minuscule). If we were to take these to starting points - would we end up with something so successful as Rotis, perhaps? But what is commendable is having the ideas and working them out and creating a font programme of 17 variants. It can be criticised but has yet to be superseded. I believe this is suggested as the eternal challenge to the typographer anyhow.

I wish I had read it years ago. An important book!

/hernan

[hrant]

> I really like the concept of legibility being increased
> upon the increased distinction between letterforms

Which is however not how we really read.

I admire Rotis, but for its glorious spirit.
Not Aicher's naive ideas about readability.

hhp

[Michael Hernan]

Agreed.

but...

what when all the letterforms are the same? Differentiation helps.

PreRecollect designed by Michael Hernan 1994

I realise a week on - that the whole book (typographie) is (/may be) designed based on a single spread that displays the Rotis font. Everything is geared up to this point.

[Riccardo Sartori]

In the tradition of reviving old threads, here’s a book about Otl Aicher that could (or could not) be seeing the light of the day:
http://www.rockethub.com/projects/5478-kommando-otl-aicher