Olympic Games Design Manual That Shaped the Visual Identity of 1972

The Munich ’72 “Guidelines and Standards for the Visual Design” encapsulate a defining moment in 20th-century graphic design history.

As the heart of one of the most memorable visual identities of the Games, they set new rules for branding and corporate identity and are still the primary source for similar events.

There are only a few copies of the iconic Munich ’72 manual, but a reprint is now available on Kickstarter.

Hardly any other sporting event attracts such worldwide attention as the Olympic Games.

But not only the sport, the athletes, touching stories and various scandals are remembered.

It’s the big picture — it’s the “look of the Games” that gets stuck in people’s heads.

At the end of the 1960s, the German Olympic Committee was confronted with more than just the organisation of a sporting event: it had to present the world the image of a new, modern Germany.

A quarter of a century after the Nazi dictatorship, design commissioner Otl Aicher (1922–1991), a pioneer of international rational design…