keyword: Ulm School of Design

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briefs historical

Design a record cover

A historical design assignment by Tomás Maldonado, at the Ulm School of Design, presented in 1963 in the magazine Ulm 8/9.

In the second quarter of the academic year 1962/63, Tomás Maldonado set the following exercise to the first year students of the Visual Communication Department: to design a case for a 33 1/3 r.p.m. gramophone record. The students could choose from records by
Mauricio Kagel (Transicion I, Transicion II, Antithese), by Karlheinz Stockhausen (Zyklus) and by Franco Evangelisti. If prefered, however, they could design a case for a record of their own selection. The cases
could be designed either in colour or in black and white – as also the circular labels in the centres of the records.

Some of the resulting works by students:

Design: Zlatan Medtugorac (1963)
Design: Hermann Ay (1963)
Design: Hermann Ay (1963)
Design: Joseph Breuer (1963)
Design: Lothar Spree (1963)
Design: Harmut Kowalke (1963)
Design: Hansrudolf Buob (1963)
Categories
briefs historical

Ulm Exercises

Some historical design briefs from the legendary Ulm School of Design (1953-1968) were presented during a study project at the Cologne International School of Design in 2002/03, supervised by Gui Bonsiepe (who was editor of the Ulm magazine).

A website was put online in 2002/03. It is still available via the Wayback Machine. Some briefs:

Otl Aicher : Schematische Darstellung komplexer Sachverhalte

Gui Bonsiepe : Einführung in die visuelle Semantik

Tomás Maldonado : hüllen für schallplatten (ulm 8/9)

In this exercise (1962/63), students have to create an album cover for an LP. The works assigned are by composers Mauricio Kagel (Transicion I, Transicion II, Antithese), Karlheinz Stockhausen (Zyklus), and Franco Evangelisti.

Josef Müller-Brockmann : Firmentypografie (ulm 8/9)

Gui Bonsiepe : Perforationen, Topologische Übungen (ulm 17/18)

Categories
briefs historical

write a radio-play

This assignment was reverse-engineered from a project description in issue #2 of “Ulm” (1958), the magazine of the Ulm School of Design. The short article describes a team-writing experiment, that was broadcast as a radio-play.

  • Make comprehensive preparatory studies in order to shape exactly the characters of the play.
  • Compose detailed biographies, diaries, letters, dreams, and scenes of everyday life of the characters.
  • Plan the scenes.
  • Compose the material into a satiric crime story.