a second profession
After the war, Willy Fleckhaus began a career as a journalist, and during the 1950s he wrote on a wide variety of social and cultural topics, first for the Fährmann magazine and later for Aufwärts, a Cologne-based youth periodical of the German trade union movement. In 1953 Fleckhaus also took over the design of Aufwärts. His first layout featured minimal texts all accompanied by all-caps headlines and large-scale photos. The effect was raw and showed the hand of an amateur, but the beginnings of the signature style are present.
Aufwärts magazine, issue 12, 1956. Cover designed by Willy Fleckhaus. Poto by Horst Baumann.
for me, typefaces are building blocks in the truest sense of the word. I am prepared to build something even if the material is very poor. —willy fleckhaus
A fragment of the cover of Dieter Kühn’s book “N”. Suhrkamp publishing house, 1970. Designed by Willy Fleckhaus.
aufwärts
Imagine an art director without any design experience, no formal design education, no technical skills. What Fleckhaus had were the boldness and courage of a 28-year-old who wanted to talk about things that mattered to his generation (″Should girls wear long trousers?″ the first issue of Aufwärts asked). But it would be wrong to assume that Fleckhaus didn’t have any visual models: he wasn’t new to the editorial world, and he certainly had heard about Swiss typography.
A page of Aufwärts magazine, issue 16, 1954. Designed by Willy Fleckhaus.
A page of Aufwärts magazine, issue 16, 1954. Designed by Willy Fleckhaus.