A5/05: Lufthansa and Graphic Design: Visual History of an Airplane Paperback – February 27, 2012

While the lengthy review given by Robin Benson is apt, one does have to ask: where are ANY other airline livery books? A study on Pan American would be great, but one doesn't exist. There are some valid points raised by Robin, but the Ulm study itself by Aicher of 1962 and the corporate design manual of 1963 are very, very rare and most likely the airline would not let you look at the corporate design manual. While it is a small study with an excerpt of the Ulm 1962 study, is it not better than nothing at all? R.M.F's review also has good points, but again, even a little is better than nothing. Who knows, maybe since THIS little book exists, it might lead to a new and better one in the future. For myself, I would rather have a magnifying glass than look tirelessly at internet pictures (but those DO help...)There are some upsides though: the dimensions of the logo and its history, the typography of the name and the design dimensions, the fonts used and some official design pictures give the book a push in the positive direction.For myself imwould say it is a good book on the visual history of Lufthansa. Should still be in print! Poster/cover a great plus. Would reccomend to any aviation historian or graphics art/typography student. As an avid user of Donald Knuth's TeX typography program for math and general text, I do enjoy this book. Again, where is any other book on any other airline?

Gave it to a DLH pilot who loved this book, which should tell you something about it!

I really like it. It is truly worth to spend money on it. Definitely I will recommend this book to others.

Love this book. Great for anyone who likes advertizing and airlines

This book, as promised, gives a sweeping overview of Lufthansa's design through the course of its history.The book's text is concise and covers major historical design and management/implementation decision points.Many, many examples and samples are provided throughout. Examples are reproduced in a small, but mostly legible, size. (Overall, this book would have been helped by being printed at the size of a textbook--it is currently the size of a smaller trade paperback, which does make it feel a bit cramped. But, the pricing was half what I would expect for a volume like this. . . . So it goes.)Worth adding to your library if you are interested in corporate design generally and in Lufthansa/aerospace design concerns at least marginally.

This book is very underwhelming...and misleading.Billed as a book about the "groundbreaking study" conducted by Otl Aicher and his students, there's less than 20 pages of snippets from the actual study (which are split into German/English, so more like 10 pages). On top of that, most of the work featured in the book is pre- and post- Aicher...which is pretty mediocre.Most of the artwork/samples in the book are shown as 1-inch thumbnails.All in all, not a very thorough book on corporate design. Not even close to being worth the value of the list price.

While the material covered in the book is interesting and informative, the dimensions of the book itself are too small in size to adequately show the numerous posters and other graphic materials presented. Also, there are twenty-two pages inexplicably printed on yellow paper which is quite distracting.Reprint the yellow pages on white paper and increase the dimensions by at least 50% and the book would rate 5 stars easily.

A worthwhile overview of this world-class airline's corporate look though the small size of the pages is not the best way to present all the interesting visual material.Lufthansa corporate look really begins in 1963 when the management implemented design proposals put forward by a design team from Ulm design college under the direction of Otl Aicher. The reputation of the Ulm student design group was sufficient to let this to happen. The design proposals allowed the airline, by 1967, to be one the world's most forward looking commercial carriers. The first pictorial section of the book shows the evolution from a rather haphazard graphic design approach, especially with paintings for posters, to a much tighter and simpler graphic style using photos, flat color panels and clean typography.The book's next section (printed on sixteen pages of orange paper) use excerpts from the Ulm design study. It seemed to be particularly thorough, covering every aspect of the airline's graphic look. The rest of the book looks in detail at various design manuals over the years, modifications to the logo from Helvetica Medium to Semi bold (and cutting part of the horizontal of the L so that it gave a tighter optical fit with rest of the logo) lots of ads and menu designs. In 1979 the airline's ad department did a design overhaul and created an even more comprehensive look which lasted up to 2000 when the Californian company Design Management Online took Lufthansa into the digital age with an online design manual. Unfortunately there are only two small, unreadable examples of the DMO work.The last pages have some interesting comments from seven designers about the Lufthansa look, a company timeline and a book and article listing but no index.I have mentioned the small page size and consequently small photos and graphics but also a small text size that makes reading the book very hard (so four stars). Six point type is just too small and annoyingly there is plenty of empty page space to allow for a larger size and for that matter bigger images throughout the pages. Oddly the book's Introduction is set in a quite readable eight point type.Though the book is a paperback it has a jacket. Remove this and it unfolds to a mini poster with a mono graphic on one side and on the reverse seven colored profiles of the Lufthansa jet fleet with various livery options suggested over the years.