Timm Rautert: otl aicher / rotis

Description

This book celebrates the most famous typeface of renowned German graphic designer and typographer Otto "Otl" Aicher (1922-1991), the Rotis font family, along with its connections to Rotis in the city of Leutkirch im Allgau, where Aicher lived and ran his studio. The basis of otl aicher / rotis is a series of photographs by Timm Rautert which he took on numerous visits to Rotis between 1972 and 1991. Rautert also writes for the first time about working with Aicher, revealing the details of their collaborations including their book on the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. An essay by typographer and design historian Dan Reynolds explores the creation and aesthetics of the Rotis font family, including Rotis grotesk, Rotis semi-grotesk, Rotis semi-antiqua and Rotis antiqua-altogether 17 font styles; while former design professor Oliver Klimpe examines Rotis the place from today's globalized perspective: of a different ecological and political era, off the beaten track yet privileged, in the heart of West Germany. otl aicher / rotis is published in anticipation of the hundredth anniversary of Aicher's birth in 2022.

Born 1941 in Tuchel, West Prussia, in 1941, Timm Rautert studied photography with Otto Steinert at the Folkwang School of Design in Essen in the 1960s. Starting in the 1970s, he mainly concentrated on photojournalism and documentary work, and in 1993 was appointed professor of photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, where he taught until 2008. In the same year, he was the first photographer to receive the Lovis Corinth Prize. His books with Steidl include When We Don't See You, You Don't See Us Either (2007), No Photographing (2011), Josef Sudek, Prague 1967 (2016), Vintage (2017), Germans in Uniform (2018), Anfang/Beginnings (2019) and Bildanalytische Photographie / Image-Analytical Photography, 1968-1974 (2020).