Erik Nitsche

Erik Nitsche (September 7, 1908 – November 10, 1998) was a pioneer in the design of books, annual reports, and other printed material. His works focused on attention to the details of page composition and simple type presentation. His hallmarks were clear design, brilliant colors, smart typography, and an adherence to particular geometric foundations.

Biography Erik Nitsche was born in Lausanne, Switzerland on September 7, 1908, and studied at the Collège Classique of Lausanne and the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich. Nitsche went to school at Kunstgewerbeschule, a University in Munich. After this, he got a job in Cologne before moving to Paris to pursue his art career. While there, Nitsche combined Bauhaus and rational together, which influenced many of his earlier pieces. To avoid the conflict that was escalating in Europe, he fled to the United States. After immigrating to the United States, he became a designer for Simplicissimus, Jugend, and Der Querschnitt, creating covers and illustrations. He moved to the United States in 1934, where he worked in Hollywood before moving to New York in 1936. There, he worked for major magazines including Life, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar as well as advertising and promotional campaigns for Twentieth Century Fox and Universal.

In 1955, Nitsche began working with the engineering company General Dynamics as art director, which he held until 1960. There, he designed a breakthrough series of posters, as well as constructing their corporate image, annual reports, and advertising through the development of information design systems. Nitsche designed a 420-page book on the company's history entitled Dynamic America, prompting him to begin designing his own books.

Nitsche was also a consultant to the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Design and to Standard Oil of New Jersey in the 1950s and 60s. 1965 to 1980, Nitsche lived in Paris where he produced over 2,000 color illustrations for the five-volume encyclopedia, L’Épopée Nationale d’un Siècle, which covered 100 years of science and technology.

In 1981, he moved back to Munich, returning to the US in 1996. Nitsche died on November 10, 1998, in Danbury, Connecticut.