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Hats off to Hans Hartmann

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Update 11.21.07
I’d like to thank Felix of design book stories and Thierry Blancpain for tracking down some additional information on Hans Hartmann.

- He was born in 1913. Died in 1991.

- He originally came from the canton of Argovia, next to Zurich and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich. He then went to Bern and among other things designed the (still in use) logo of the national train company SBB. In addition, he designed a fair amount of post stamps.

- The Hans Hartmann estate seems to be in the communal library in berne.

- Lastly, here is a short bio on Hans Hartmann (In german).

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Hans Hartmann is one of the lesser known designers that lived in Switzerland during the 1950s. A google search of his name brings up almost nothing. Outside of his native country his work seems to be lost in obscurity. The only information I have on him comes from a small monograph produced in 1958.

Most of his work centered around companies that were in or around Bern, Switzerland. This included designs for PTT, F. Gygi + Co. and Teppichhaus Bossart & Co. Most likely his contemporaries (Armin Hofmann, Emil Ruder in Basel , Josef Muller Brockann in Zurich) located to the North of Bern would of been aware of his work. However, I was unable to find any information that suggested any collaborations with these other designers.

If anyone has any information related to Hans or his design work, please contact me. It would be great if we could build a more complete resource on this talented designer. Thanks to the poster connection for the top 2 images.

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11.15.07 in Off our book shelves by Dave

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Hi. This work looks incredible. Could you share any more information on the monograph you own? I’d love to hunt for a copy. Thanks.

11.15.07 |

Jonathan Bennett |

Off our book shelves |

that rooster logo is killin’ it! looks like the bare essence of the melting pot music logo.

Yea, its really similar. It’s weird though, I can think of 2 or 3 other rooster designs that look just like this. If I can find them, I’ll post them.

This is a beautiful page of Hans Hartman’s work. He was a true master of graphic design.

Dennis, My esp must have been activated. I was just searching around for Hans Hartmann and found this site. Back at Pratt as an undergrad, I brought a book into class one day and pointed out some of Hartmann’s work out to Charlie Goslin and found out that he was a huge admirer of the work too. When I graduated in ‘82 I made a trip to Europe and and specifically to Bern to look up Hartmann….gave him a call but he only spoke German…I didn’t so I hung up–but called back an hour later to see if anyone else might pick up the line. To my excitement, someone did–his wife, who spoke perfect English. She invited me to see his studio: a ground level extension to his house, lots of windows–work all around–a classic design studio. That afternoon got to show him slides of my student work, he had flat file drawers of posters and press sheets. He and his wife were extremely gracious to me. We met his daughter, and all went to the Bern design school for a visit, to the city museum, then out to dinner. I think I stayed in a youth hostel and headed out the next morning, but I still have the mementos of that visit….a poster (framed) and book (on my top shelf) that I tucked into my backpack. A genuine graphic design experience.

Absolutely love his work… brilliant.

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