Armin Hofmann was born in Winterthur in 1920 and trained as a lithographer before he began teaching at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in Basel in 1947. Over the following decades he built the graphic design course there into one of the most influential in the world, and his students carried its ideas to Europe, America and Japan.
He is best known for his posters for the Stadttheater Basel and the city’s cultural institutions. They are reduced to a few strong forms, often in black and white, with type and image held in careful tension.
His book Graphic Design Manual: Principles and Practice, published in 1965, set out his teaching method and is still used in design schools today. He also taught at Yale, linking the Basel school to a generation of American designers.
