Karl Gerstner's Universe
The graphic designer and agency founder has put his life's work into a thick book
The graphic designer and agency founder has put his life's work into a thick bookBy Andreas Panzeri "Looking back on 5 x 10 years of graphic design etc." is the name of the thick illustrated book in which GGK co-founder Karl Gerstner reviews his influential work as a designer. The book reads as a history of advertising, but equally well as a textbook for design.
As a co-founder of the GGK, the Basel designer Karl Gerstner became an international ambassador for modern typography and graphic design in the sixties and seventies. Karl Gerstner, who is intellectually close to Max Bill and Richard P. Lohse, is considered the Swiss graphic designer with the greatest international influence in this era.
At least that's how Manfred Kröplien, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, sees it, expertly justified, when he writes in the foreword to Gerstner's new book: "The real influences on German graphic design did not come from the USA, as one might have thought, but from Switzerland." In his analysis, Kröplien already locates a "spirit of optimism for the fifties, in which Gerstner's work must also be placed." Until the beginning of the sixties, Swiss graphic art was a model for the Germans, "as a result of the international ostracism of Nazi Germany. The Swiss provided their big neighbor with new substitute roots, so to speak, after the wartime collapse.
Gerstner, who was born in Basel in 1930, began this resurgent period of the rose-tinted "economic miracle" as a freelancer for the Basel-based chemical company Geigy. There he designed advertisements for dyes in the fifties. Blotter sheets for doctors, a popular medium for pharmaceutical advertising at the time, were also among his tasks.
In 1958, Gerstner's direct client at Geigy was Markus Kutter, who organized the PR for the 200th anniversary of the traditional Basel-based chemical company. For Dr. phil. I, who made his first voyage to America on the Atlantic giant "Andrea Doria," which later sank, Gerstner not only designed the cover for his novel "Ship to Europe," but also lent the text in the book a very diverse typography. Gerstner's idea was "a confusing puzzle of letters that unravels after reading." This creative interplay of typography and text would later become an important trademark of the young GGK.
The prehistory of the communications company began on January 1, 1959, with the founding of an agency Gerstner und Kutter - Werbung, Grafik, Publizität. This became GGK in 1963. Three years earlier, Paul Gredinger, a certified architect ETH, had also been hired. The partner authorized as the second G in the logo, who had previously composed electronic music, was responsible for the product form and later design department at GGK. "Without corresponding orders, however," as Gerstner recalls in his slightly ironic anecdotes. The time was evidently not yet ripe for such thoroughly styled products, although Gerstner had already organized a first conference on the subject of appearance - "later called corporate identity" - for the Association of Swiss Graphic Designers in 1959.
From nostalgic graphics to modern art
All these epochs of Gerstner's work are richly illustrated in the "Retrospect" book, starting with the brochure "200 Years of Geigy" and a comprehensive chapter with VW advertising to international exhibition posters on Gerstner's artistic work in current times.
Many nostalgic gems are depicted, such as graphic works for the Boîte à musique, a trendy record store in Basel at the time, or early advertisements for the Rheinbrücke department store. This then area-wide communication around the new styling of the Basel department store formed the first major commission for the advertising agency Gerstner and Kutter.
Such graphics, which are interesting in terms of advertising history, are supplemented in "Retrospect," quasi as books within a book, by many theories that are still valid and that Karl Gerstner repeatedly published on the subjects of design, art, and typography during his time as an advertiser.
In 1957, for example, he published the booklet "Cold Art - On the Location of Contemporary Painting. With it, he wanted to help the constructive-concrete art, to which he counted himself, to gain more understanding. "A little volume that today is one of the sought-after items in rare book stores," he reveals, not without pride. Also in 1957, Gerstner, as an artist, can also look forward to his own first exhibition in Zurich.
His publication "Die neue Grafik" (The New Graphic) is a history of advertising graphics in which Gerstner incorporates his large collection of exemplary designs, including those of colleagues he particularly appreciated, into a book. The work is accompanied by a text by Markus Kutter. In the fall of 1963, Gerstner's volume "Designing Programs" is published. This publication became a cult book in the graphic design scene of the 1960s and was also honored with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
His "Compendium for Alphabets" becomes the most important writing on modern typography in 1972. The basis of the compendium is a then newly understood interplay of type and language, as has since become the style at the then GGK. Other books in the eighties are: "The Spirit of Color," "The Art of Karl Gerstner," "The Forms of Color," and "The Artist and the Majority." It should not be forgotten that Gerstner was also fond of epicurean pleasures, but with a high critical consciousness. For example, he incorporated his insights into gastronomy into the book "Avant Garde Küche," which pleads for a cultivated approach to hedonistic demands.
As he matured, art took an increasingly important place in Karl Gerstner's life. Books about art were an occasion for him "so that a thought could be thought through to its conclusion. Once again, of course, in the current work on the history of design, his "Visual Logic. The Art of Karl Gerstner" from 1997.
The respective posters document his numerous international art exhibitions, for example in New York, Düsseldorf or Caracas as well as at Marlborough, London, Beyeler, Basel, or Jamileh Weber in Zurich.
Anecdotes from the GGK period told from a personal perspective
Wonderful anecdotes from the GGK era, told in a personal tone with a sense of humor, can be found throughout the chapters. For example, how Gerstner and Gredinger, who were pushing for expansion, had accepted a 20 million budget for Ford in 1967 almost secretly against the will of Kutter, who was much more cautious in his planning, and had to kick out the old but much smaller customer Audi because of this, as well as found a branch agency in Düsseldorf overnight. Gerstner becomes the first foreign head of GGK Düsseldorf, and this from now on also international agency is also managed many years later by Robert Stalder as well as Reini Weber.
With such reminiscences from his GGK days, the former agency manager also thinks analytically about the business, for example about the development from graphics to art directing. Gerstner sees this as a shift from visual to more verbal ideas.
The man behind the first G of GGK also allows himself critical thoughts on the developments of his agency group, which in the meantime had offshoots halfway around the world. Why did the leading company with 600 employees at the time have to degenerate again into a partial conglomerate, as the changed GGK presents itself today?
Gerstner himself had already withdrawn from day-to-day business in the 1970s and remained with GGK only as a member of the board of directors. Instead, he redesigned the German business magazine Capital as a freelancer. He also gave the newspaper France Soir a new look during a stay in Paris. Later, he restyled the Basler Zeitung, as well as the Frankfurter Allgemeine and the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
In his later work, Karl Gerstner accepted more and more such specialized commissions for publishing houses. Burda, Ringier and Langenscheidt also had Gerstner give them a new CI. All ideas for these commissions are didactically and constructively documented in the book presented here. All development steps from the first draft to the successfully accepted design solution are competently commented with many questions and answers by Gerstner.
Logos and labels tell economic history
Gerstner's most important work in the eighties included the new design for IBM. Another interesting chapter is the development of a new corporate design for Swissair. Gerstner was able to cram this through as a freelance designer during the Baltensweiler era. With the step from the drawn aviator symbol to the set, simple logo with the Futura bold, Gerstner caused passionate discussion not only in the industry, but throughout Switzerland at that time. This development process with Swissair, which was completely transformed visually at the time, is also documented in the thick book.
As early as 1964, GGK had been commissioned to change the appearance of Shell with its distinctive shell logo. The ideas were rejected. Nevertheless, they are documented in the book as an insert worth reading about the brand's history.
Karl Gerstner wrote this "review" in Alsace. Today he lives and works there in Hippolskirch, together with Esther Grether, entrepreneur and art collector. In 1988, he is nominated for the Hall of Fame of the New York Art Directors Club. However, he had to forego the crowning party in the USA because Gerstner became an honorary member of the German Art Directors Club on the same weekend, and in 1992 he also became a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
His latest book is printed in a typeface designed by Gerstner himself and named after him. The "Retrospect" (also available in an English edition) counts 700 illustrations on more than 250 pages and is published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, ISBN 3-7757-9058-6.
The GGK archive in its former domicile on Aeschengraben in Basel had to be cleared out a year ago for reasons of space. On this occasion, the Basel Poster Collection was allowed to look through the large-format archive boxes and remove all the receipts and objects of interest to posterity, as a donation from Lowe Lintas GGK, Zurich.
Since then, part of the valuable holdings have been housed in the Poster Collection in the exhibition rooms of the School of Design at Spalenvorstadt 2 in Basel and in the Graphic Arts Collection of the Zurich Museum of Design at Technoparkstrasse 1 in Zurich.
As a co-founder of the GGK, the Basel designer Karl Gerstner became an international ambassador for modern typography and graphic design in the sixties and seventies. Karl Gerstner, who is intellectually close to Max Bill and Richard P. Lohse, is considered the Swiss graphic designer with the greatest international influence in this era.
At least that's how Manfred Kröplien, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, sees it, expertly justified, when he writes in the foreword to Gerstner's new book: "The real influences on German graphic design did not come from the USA, as one might have thought, but from Switzerland." In his analysis, Kröplien already locates a "spirit of optimism for the fifties, in which Gerstner's work must also be placed." Until the beginning of the sixties, Swiss graphic art was a model for the Germans, "as a result of the international ostracism of Nazi Germany. The Swiss provided their big neighbor with new substitute roots, so to speak, after the wartime collapse.
Gerstner, who was born in Basel in 1930, began this resurgent period of the rose-tinted "economic miracle" as a freelancer for the Basel-based chemical company Geigy. There he designed advertisements for dyes in the fifties. Blotter sheets for doctors, a popular medium for pharmaceutical advertising at the time, were also among his tasks.
In 1958, Gerstner's direct client at Geigy was Markus Kutter, who organized the PR for the 200th anniversary of the traditional Basel-based chemical company. For Dr. phil. I, who made his first voyage to America on the Atlantic giant "Andrea Doria," which later sank, Gerstner not only designed the cover for his novel "Ship to Europe," but also lent the text in the book a very diverse typography. Gerstner's idea was "a confusing puzzle of letters that unravels after reading." This creative interplay of typography and text would later become an important trademark of the young GGK.
The prehistory of the communications company began on January 1, 1959, with the founding of an agency Gerstner und Kutter - Werbung, Grafik, Publizität. This became GGK in 1963. Three years earlier, Paul Gredinger, a certified architect ETH, had also been hired. The partner authorized as the second G in the logo, who had previously composed electronic music, was responsible for the product form and later design department at GGK. "Without corresponding orders, however," as Gerstner recalls in his slightly ironic anecdotes. The time was evidently not yet ripe for such thoroughly styled products, although Gerstner had already organized a first conference on the subject of appearance - "later called corporate identity" - for the Association of Swiss Graphic Designers in 1959.
From nostalgic graphics to modern art
All these epochs of Gerstner's work are richly illustrated in the "Retrospect" book, starting with the brochure "200 Years of Geigy" and a comprehensive chapter with VW advertising to international exhibition posters on Gerstner's artistic work in current times.
Many nostalgic gems are depicted, such as graphic works for the Boîte à musique, a trendy record store in Basel at the time, or early advertisements for the Rheinbrücke department store. This then area-wide communication around the new styling of the Basel department store formed the first major commission for the advertising agency Gerstner and Kutter.
Such graphics, which are interesting in terms of advertising history, are supplemented in "Retrospect," quasi as books within a book, by many theories that are still valid and that Karl Gerstner repeatedly published on the subjects of design, art, and typography during his time as an advertiser.
In 1957, for example, he published the booklet "Cold Art - On the Location of Contemporary Painting. With it, he wanted to help the constructive-concrete art, to which he counted himself, to gain more understanding. "A little volume that today is one of the sought-after items in rare book stores," he reveals, not without pride. Also in 1957, Gerstner, as an artist, can also look forward to his own first exhibition in Zurich.
His publication "Die neue Grafik" (The New Graphic) is a history of advertising graphics in which Gerstner incorporates his large collection of exemplary designs, including those of colleagues he particularly appreciated, into a book. The work is accompanied by a text by Markus Kutter. In the fall of 1963, Gerstner's volume "Designing Programs" is published. This publication became a cult book in the graphic design scene of the 1960s and was also honored with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
His "Compendium for Alphabets" becomes the most important writing on modern typography in 1972. The basis of the compendium is a then newly understood interplay of type and language, as has since become the style at the then GGK. Other books in the eighties are: "The Spirit of Color," "The Art of Karl Gerstner," "The Forms of Color," and "The Artist and the Majority." It should not be forgotten that Gerstner was also fond of epicurean pleasures, but with a high critical consciousness. For example, he incorporated his insights into gastronomy into the book "Avant Garde Küche," which pleads for a cultivated approach to hedonistic demands.
As he matured, art took an increasingly important place in Karl Gerstner's life. Books about art were an occasion for him "so that a thought could be thought through to its conclusion. Once again, of course, in the current work on the history of design, his "Visual Logic. The Art of Karl Gerstner" from 1997.
The respective posters document his numerous international art exhibitions, for example in New York, Düsseldorf or Caracas as well as at Marlborough, London, Beyeler, Basel, or Jamileh Weber in Zurich.
Anecdotes from the GGK period told from a personal perspective
Wonderful anecdotes from the GGK era, told in a personal tone with a sense of humor, can be found throughout the chapters. For example, how Gerstner and Gredinger, who were pushing for expansion, had accepted a 20 million budget for Ford in 1967 almost secretly against the will of Kutter, who was much more cautious in his planning, and had to kick out the old but much smaller customer Audi because of this, as well as found a branch agency in Düsseldorf overnight. Gerstner becomes the first foreign head of GGK Düsseldorf, and this from now on also international agency is also managed many years later by Robert Stalder as well as Reini Weber.
With such reminiscences from his GGK days, the former agency manager also thinks analytically about the business, for example about the development from graphics to art directing. Gerstner sees this as a shift from visual to more verbal ideas.
The man behind the first G of GGK also allows himself critical thoughts on the developments of his agency group, which in the meantime had offshoots halfway around the world. Why did the leading company with 600 employees at the time have to degenerate again into a partial conglomerate, as the changed GGK presents itself today?
Gerstner himself had already withdrawn from day-to-day business in the 1970s and remained with GGK only as a member of the board of directors. Instead, he redesigned the German business magazine Capital as a freelancer. He also gave the newspaper France Soir a new look during a stay in Paris. Later, he restyled the Basler Zeitung, as well as the Frankfurter Allgemeine and the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
In his later work, Karl Gerstner accepted more and more such specialized commissions for publishing houses. Burda, Ringier and Langenscheidt also had Gerstner give them a new CI. All ideas for these commissions are didactically and constructively documented in the book presented here. All development steps from the first draft to the successfully accepted design solution are competently commented with many questions and answers by Gerstner.
Logos and labels tell economic history
Gerstner's most important work in the eighties included the new design for IBM. Another interesting chapter is the development of a new corporate design for Swissair. Gerstner was able to cram this through as a freelance designer during the Baltensweiler era. With the step from the drawn aviator symbol to the set, simple logo with the Futura bold, Gerstner caused passionate discussion not only in the industry, but throughout Switzerland at that time. This development process with Swissair, which was completely transformed visually at the time, is also documented in the thick book.
As early as 1964, GGK had been commissioned to change the appearance of Shell with its distinctive shell logo. The ideas were rejected. Nevertheless, they are documented in the book as an insert worth reading about the brand's history.
Karl Gerstner wrote this "review" in Alsace. Today he lives and works there in Hippolskirch, together with Esther Grether, entrepreneur and art collector. In 1988, he is nominated for the Hall of Fame of the New York Art Directors Club. However, he had to forego the crowning party in the USA because Gerstner became an honorary member of the German Art Directors Club on the same weekend, and in 1992 he also became a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
His latest book is printed in a typeface designed by Gerstner himself and named after him. The "Retrospect" (also available in an English edition) counts 700 illustrations on more than 250 pages and is published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, ISBN 3-7757-9058-6.
The GGK archive in its former domicile on Aeschengraben in Basel had to be cleared out a year ago for reasons of space. On this occasion, the Basel Poster Collection was allowed to look through the large-format archive boxes and remove all the receipts and objects of interest to posterity, as a donation from Lowe Lintas GGK, Zurich.
Since then, part of the valuable holdings have been housed in the Poster Collection in the exhibition rooms of the School of Design at Spalenvorstadt 2 in Basel and in the Graphic Arts Collection of the Zurich Museum of Design at Technoparkstrasse 1 in Zurich.
