Design: 1972 Munich Olympic Poster Art

I love vintage advertising posters. I started collecting a few years back, and I have a little collection that I am quite proud of. One of my posters is an amazing ad by Ferenc Pinter (take a look at the website. AMAZING artist and designer). I can't find an image of it on the Wide Wide World of Web, so check out this crappy pic I took on my iphone. doesn't begin to do it justice, but it still manages to radiate AWESOME.



This is another one for the same client that I think I need to get for Nixta (OK, its for me, but he can look at it too).



I started poking around for cool Marathon related posters, and they were mostly uninspired. However, once I expanded the search to include the Olympics, I found some beautiful art that reminded me of the Pinter work I have been obsessing over.

Otl Aicher was the designer who created the visual identity of the 1972 games. He created the pictograms that are now used as standard for all games following, and his clean, graphic style translated beautifully across all media.







I found a little info on the Marathon poster in a feature that Wallpaper magazine ran on Aicher's Olympic work. Much like the degenerate artists at Disney, Aicher's team wanted to leave their signatures on the project, and so got a little self indulgent with the last poster to be produced. If you look closely (please do, and report back, because I can't see it), MAYBE you can see that they incorporated their profile photographs into the foliage artwork.

There are more images from the project here, as well as a look at the branding across all promotional media here. Definitely go check it out, the work is just stunning.

Going through all of these amazing posters...I think I need more walls.