page_title: Ulm School of Design
section_title: Internal conflicts
hierarchical_section_title: Ulm School of Design / History / Internal conflicts
caption_attribution_description: Corporative image design of Lufthansa at HfG Exhibition, Ulmer Museum
context_page_description: The Ulm School of Design was a college of design based in Ulm, Germany. It was founded in 1953 by Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill, the latter being first rector of the school and a former student at the Bauhaus. The HfG quickly gained international recognition by emphasizing the holistic, multidisciplinary context of design beyond the Bauhaus approach of integrating art, craft and technology. The subjects of sociology, psychology, politics, economics, philosophy and systems-thinking were integrated with aesthetics and technology. During HfG operations from 1953–1968, progressive approaches to the design process were implemented within the departments of Product Design, Visual Communication, Industrialized Building, Information and Filmmaking.
  The HfG building was designed by Max Bill and remains intact today as a historically important and functional building under the auspices of Foundation Ulm. The HfG was the most progressive educational institution of design in the 1950s and 1960s and a pioneer in the study of semiotics. It is viewed as one of the world's significant design schools, equal in influence to the Bauhaus.
context_section_description: In 1956 Max Bill resigned as rector, due to changes in the body of academic development and differences in the approach to design school teaching. Tomás Maldonado took his place as rector. Bill continued to teach but finally left the school in 1957. Max Bill favored a teaching approach that followed the continuation of the "heroic" Bauhaus tradition, based on the Arts and Crafts model, in which the artist-designer saw their primary role in product development as form-giving. A key objective of the Bauhaus was also to ensure the form-giving artist-designer considered the technology of materials and mass production methods. However, many teachers at HfG, especially those of theoretical courses, sought to emphasize analytic methods encompassing sociological, economic, psychological and physiological considerations.
  Among them was Tomás Maldonado, who saw the design process as a system embodying both scientific-based and intuitive-based thinking. Aesthetic considerations were no longer the primary conceptual basis of design. The professional designer would be an "integrator" with responsibility for integrating a large number of specialties in addition to aesthetics, mostly the diverse requirements of materials, manufacturing and context of product use, as well as considerations of usability, identity and marketing. Under the leadership of Maldonado, the school dropped the "artist" focus of Max Bill and proposed a new philosophy of education as an "operational science", a systems-thinking approach which embodied both art and science.
  Max Bill's departure also heralded a new phase: the creation of "development groups" that were created specifically to create links with industry. Many of the resulting designs went into production immediately. Among the most successful was audio equipment for the company Braun, corporate identity for the German airline Lufthansa and elevated trains for Railroad Hamburg. These industrial commissions brought a wealth of experience in teaching and decisive influence to the school and enhanced its reputation.
  In the fall of 1958 a major exhibition was held in the HfG five years after its opening. The HfG was presented to the general public for the first time, showing both the results of work from student workshops and the work of teachers. That same year also came the first issue of the HfG magazine "ulm", which was published in German and English, and lasted until the school closed in 1968.
  The formal education process continued to evolve during the 1960s. Teachers such as the mathematician Horst Rittel, sociologist Hanno Kesting, and industrial designer Bruce Archer were in favor of a design methodology based primarily on analytical studies, including business analysis. This approach caused internal conflicts as Otl Aicher, Hans Gugelot, Walter Zeischegg, and Tomás Maldonado resisted such an overly analytical emphasis and claimed instead that the design process had to be more than strictly a 'method of analysis'. It must be a balancing of both art and science, such as with the study of semiotics.
  The consequence of this debate was a great exhibition of work that had been created in the classes of HfG and showcased the successful balancing of art and science. The show was initially in Ulm and Stuttgart in 1963, later in the Neue Sammlung, Munich, and in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In addition to the fundamental debate over curriculum, changes were made in the constitution and the reintroduction of a single rector to replace the Board of Governors.
caption: Corporate Identity Design for Lufthansa.
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