Karl Schulpig

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Karl Schulpig (born May 25, 1884 , † November 19, 1948 in Prettin ) was a German commercial artist and painter.

life and work

Karl Schulpig had his own studio in Berlin around 1914 . He mainly dealt with the development of company signets and the design of posters. Some of his logos are still used today or have had a formative effect on the modern redesigns derived from them. With his reduced pictorial style, he broke new ground in the 1920s. Instead of the seal-like and ornate logos and symbols that were often used until then, he designed memorable, almost iconic figurative marks for numerous companies . Today he is considered one of the fathers of modern logo design. Schulpig also became known for his woodcut work . Two postage stamps that he designed on the occasion of the “ Saar Voting ” in 1934 are exemplary.

The eagle with three boys was created in 1922 for Allianz insurance as a symbol of security and protection.

The logo of the Cologne Exhibition Center from 1923, which still looks modern today, shows Cologne Cathedral and the Rhine in just a few lines. Except for typographical additions, it was used unchanged until 2002.

For MITROPA Central European Sleeping Car and Dining Car Corporation , he also used the motif of an eagle - its wings form the shape of an 'M' for Mitropa. As part of a corporate design , he also developed an independent, angular corporate font for Mitropa, the so-called Schulpig font . Because of its proximity to the symbolic language of National Socialism , the logo was later only used in fragmentary form by the GDR service company Mitropa. The head of the imperial eagle disappeared and the previously four-spoke wheel, reminiscent of a swastika in connection with the eagle, got two more spokes.

For the social democratic book club Der Bücherkreis , founded in 1924 , Schulpig designed the distinctive symbol of a standing man with a bowler hat looking into an open book. A version of calligraphic Pelican - word mark he recorded the 1,926th

Also in 1926, Karl Schulpig was able to win the poster competition for the Magdeburg German Theater Exhibition in 1927 . Competitors were Lyonel Feininger , César Klein and Johannes Molzahn . Schulpig designed a memorable face with strong facial expressions (the mass was initially planned as a "Magdeburg mask"), which is formed from a capital T for theater and an M for Magdeburg. The logo appeared on large posters across Germany with a print run of 75,000 and in small format with a print run of 250,000.

His design for the former number crunchers -Weltmarke "Addiator" mimics the operation of the mechanical calculator.

Schulpig's logo for the Bolle dairy was part of the streetscape in Berlin until the early 1990s.

Award

Publications

  • Trade mark. Dedicated to friends and clients . Sequences 2 and 4–6 in four small volumes. Self-published, Berlin 1922–1925.

literature

  • Johannes Plass, Heinrich Paravicini: Who was Karl Schulpig? About the development of the figurative marks . In: Art Directors Club for Germany (Hrsg.): Sushi 6 annual edition of the ADC young talent competition 2003. Berlin 2004, pp. 32–40, ISBN 3-87439-655-X
  • Walter F. Schubert: Karl Schulpig , in: Archives for book trade and commercial graphics, March 1, 1925, pp. 45–124.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johannes Plass, Heinrich Paravicini: Who was Karl Schulpig? About the development of the figurative marks . In: Art Directors Club for Germany (ed.): Sushi 6 annual booklet of the ADC young talent competition 2003. Berlin 2004, p. 33.
  2. ↑ Anthology "The political poster", (Verlag Das Plakat)

Remarks

  1. ^ Inspired by the Mitropa font, a modernized version appeared in 1997 as "FF Pullman".

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schulpig, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1884
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1948
Place of death Prettin