Große Düsseldorfer Kunstausstellung 1961
The Große Düsseldorfer Kunstausstellung was a large art exhibition that took place at Düsseldorf’s Kunstpalast (Ehrenhof) from 9 April to 7 May 1961.
Wolf D. Zimmermann designed the key visual and brochure cover. He opted for a lockup involving seventeen times the letter D (or d), for Düsseldorf. Many of the featured typefaces were released in the decade before the exhibition, including Salto (Klingspor, 1952), Vendôme italique (Fonderie Olive, 1953), Pro Arte (Haas, 1954), Time Script (Weber, 1956) Folio schmalfett (Bauer, 1956), and Papageno (Bauer, 1958). The only typeface to appear twice, in upper- and lowercase, is Volta (Bauer, 1955).
The exhibition title at the top is added in Helvetica. I’m not quite sure if the elongated didone D really is from Onyx. And I didn’t track down the specific Bodoni (?) version.
Via Jens Müller, who praises Zimmermann as one of his favorite designers.
![<cite>twen [1959–1971]</cite>](https://assets.fontsinuse.com/static/use-media-items/243/242268/thumb/6746ff13/@2x/BBP_vol-3_p84-85.webp "<cite>twen [1959–1971]</cite>")
2 Comments on “Große Düsseldorfer Kunstausstellung 1961”
Great one.
Though the word lock-up is probably not correct here.
A) I believe that the brochure must be something like A5 or even A4 in Size, most of these typefaces didn’t exist in larger metal type sizes than 72 P.
B) Even if the needed sizes would exist, you couldn’t lock them up so tightly. A lower case d has a body that is not possible to overprint in one single lock-up.
So probably (also considering the time context), this was a montage that was either printed in offset, silk-screen or in letterpress (from a plate…). So probably paste-up would be the correct expression.
Great «use» anyways!
Thanks for your comment, Dafi! You are absolutely correct about the technique that was used here. It certainly wasn’t printed from metal type directly.
When I wrote “lockup”, I wasn’t thinking of the term’s (original) meaning in letterpress printing of locking type and other printing elements in position by combining it with spacing material, furniture, and quoins.
Rather, I was using it more in a figurative sense. As, for example, in “logo lockup”, where several graphical elements are combined in a defined way. Zimmermann composed the various letterforms in a particular arrangement. Like in a puzzle, he filled the square area by choosing different sizes and by rotating some of the glyphs, effectively “locking” them into place. Not with quoins, but (probably) with paste.