Munich 1972 Olympic Design × Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions

Aicher's pictogram system gives the tool and warning signs a stricter grid while the drawings stay in outline.

From the research on Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions

Mix them and make something Munich 1972 Olympic Design Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Munich 1972 Olympic Design, their arrangement from Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions, the finish from Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Munich 1972 Olympic Design (Otl Aicher) Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions

Type from Munich 1972 Olympic Design: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Flush left, ragged right
Colour from Munich 1972 Olympic Design: Analogous harmony
Flat fields
Form from Munich 1972 Olympic Design: Pictogram
Stylised figuration
Composition from Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions: Isolated object
Sequential narrative
Surface from Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions: Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Munich 1972 Olympic Design

Form

Inter Tight, standing in for Univers (Adrian Frutiger, 1957), the only typeface of the Games' official communications, with Univers 55 as the house weight

Text · Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions

The wordless flat-pack booklet as IKEA drew it up after 1999, which replaced the exploded view of older instruction manuals with step-by-step pictures: the product is drawn in black outline on white as it looks at each stage of building, with grey only to pick out the part being fitted. The work is broken into many simple steps with few points of focus each, hardware and tools carry their article numbers, and a cartoon 'assembly figure', now drawn without gender, gives tips. With no words, one booklet serves every market.

Space Mono; Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions used Almost no type and On covers and brand material only

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Munich 1972 Olympic Design, with a counter-accent from Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Munich 1972 Olympic Design (Otl Aicher) Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions

#9ccf7c ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#49aa76 accent · 18%
#6e6e6e accent · 14%
#8a96c4 accent · 10%
#dcdcdc accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #9ccf7c;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #49aa76;
  --accent-2: #6e6e6e;
  --accent-3: #8a96c4;
  --accent-4: #dcdcdc;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Space Mono", monospace;
}

Use it with care

Munich 1972 Olympic Design (Otl Aicher): The Olympic rings are a protected IOC mark and the Munich posters, emblem and pictograms are the work of named designers: borrow the method (one grid, a light landscape palette, grid-drawn figures), not the artefacts. The 'cheerful Games' are also bound up with the Munich massacre of 5–6 September 1972, when Black September gunmen killed 11 members of the Israeli team; use the identity's optimism knowingly.

Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions: IKEA’s name, logo and assembly figure belong to IKEA: work in the manner (black line on white, one simple step per picture, no words) without using them, without copying a real IKEA booklet or product, and without presenting the result as IKEA’s or implying a link with IKEA.

The two styles

A sports poster reading “open together” shows three overlapping, differently coloured images of a runner above a tent-roofed stadium and a curving athletics track. A vertical strip of six sports pictograms runs down the left, with a large orange circle at the upper right.

1966–1972 · Central Europe Munich 1972 Olympic Design (Otl Aicher) The visual programme Otl Aicher's department made for the 1972 Munich Olympics, the 'cheerful Games' meant to show a democratic, modest West Germany. One grid and one typeface, Univers, governed tickets, programmes, uniforms, signs and posters. The colours were the blues, greens, silver and oranges of the Bavarian landscape, with red, black and gold kept out. Sports pictograms drawn on a 45-degree grid and posters made from photographs reduced to flat bands of the official colours became a model for event and wayfinding design.

Black-and-white illustrated assembly instructions show an adjustable desk lamp above a row of parts and nine numbered panels. Arrows and circular detail views explain attaching the arms and shade, tightening joints with a hex key, adjusting the lamp, and switching it on.

1999–present · Northern Europe, Global / networked Wordless Flat-Pack Assembly Instructions The wordless flat-pack booklet as IKEA drew it up after 1999, which replaced the exploded view of older instruction manuals with step-by-step pictures: the product is drawn in black outline on white as it looks at each stage of building, with grey only to pick out the part being fitted. The work is broken into many simple steps with few points of focus each, hardware and tools carry their article numbers, and a cartoon 'assembly figure', now drawn without gender, gives tips. With no words, one booklet serves every market.

More combinations

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