Design of the 1950s
Text: Otl Aicher, Jürgen W. Braun, Siegfried Gronert,
Robert Kuhn, Dieter Rams, Rudolf Schönwandt
Published in 1989 by: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne

Johannes Potente was a trained chaser and toolmaker. He designed and built door handle models, because these were in demand at the Westphalian metal processor Franz Schneider in Brakel. No more and no less. It is all the more surprising that this anonymous designer succeeded in influencing the style of a whole era by his hand form design.

Johannes Potente’s designs were so potent, that their author could not remain unknown for ever. 40 years after their creation, they were noticed by the curators of the New York Museum of Modern Art. In 1998, four of Potente’s models were added to the museum’s collection, as had happened many years before to the graphic artwork of the Ulm designer Otl Aicher who was also still anonymous in the 1950s.

The common denominator of Otl Aicher and Johannes Potente was and remains that they considered themselves as craftsmen without giving a thought to a signature under their designs or even to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Not in spite of, but because of this attitude they eventually rose to the Olympus of fame in design.