Dürer's 500th
Joachim Romann's 1969 winning logo for Dürer-Jahr 1971 Nürnberg.
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker and theorist of the German Renaissance. He was born in Nuremberg in 1471. To celebrate what would have been his 500th birthday, the city planned a year-long celebration of cultural activities and initiatives throughout 1971. These initiatives would fall under a unified programme and visual identity. To find a logo for the celebration, the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Nuremberg launched a competition. Over a thousand logos were submitted with the winning entry being submitted by Joachim Romann, who recieved a first prize of 6.000DM.
The key challenge was finding a suitable interpretation of Dürer’s famous AD monogram, and integrated the figure of 71. This was a key requirement of the brief. At the time, it was noted, that this felt like it offered little room for creativity, however, 1,131 submissions were recieved and collectively displayed a remarkable range of interpretations, some of which are presented in this post.