Title: Fred Troller Design [Unit 55]
Introduction: Steven Heller
Designer/editor: Dani Piderman
Essays: Karin Gimmi, Mark Owens, Meret Troller Piderman

Graphic designer Fred Troller forged a Swiss modernist path through corporate America in a career that spanned five decades and began in the early 1950s. This comprehensive survey of his work is the first book to bring together a wide range of his influential projects for clients including Geigy, American Airlines and IBM. 

Thanks to the generosity of over 500 backers who helped crowdfund the publication of Fred Troller Design via the Volume platform, we have a limited amount of copies now available to purchase from the Unit shop.

The book

Fred Troller Design includes over 60 pages dedicated to his work for the Geigy Chemical Corporation, 50+ pages of his book covers (many for publishers Doubleday), as well as examples of the numerous visual identities and posters he also designed over his career.

Through his use of use of bold colour, photographic imagery and minimalist sans-serif typography, Troller was preoccupied with eliminating visual chaos and the desire to communicate complex ideas with concise minimalism – ideas that contrasted to the more ornate trends that prevailed in the visual culture of the 1960s.

Designed by Dani Piderman (who worked as Troller’s design assistant), the book includes an introduction by Steven Heller, essays on Troller’s work at Geigy (by Karin Gimmi) and on his book cover design (by Mark Owens), alongside an extensive personal biography written by his daughter, Meret Troller Piderman.

About Fred Troller

Troller was born in Zurich in 1930 and graduated from the Zurich School of Design in 1951. He then worked as an independent graphic designer before relocating to New York in 1960, where he became design director of the Geigy art department. While there he produced a range of influential work for the firm across advertising, packaging and editorial design, making use of grids, white space and abstract graphics – establishing the clear and direct Geigy style in the process.

Troller wrote that “Geigy’s advertising is in reality neither Swiss nor a style. It is the evolutionary result of years of experimentation and discovery.... It is more properly defined as a functional approach to design.”

In 1966 the designer founded Troller Associates, in response to the burgeoning demand for unified graphic identity systems, trademarks and annual reports, and worked with clients such as IBM, Cross Siclare Papers, Faber Castell, Hoffmann LaRoche, Champion International, New York Zoological Society and many more.

As a successful artist and sculptor, Troller also exhibited his work in galleries in New York; while in 1995, his design career was celebrated in a retrospective show at Georgia State University. Troller taught at the School of Visual Arts and Cooper Union, among many other institutions, and was chairman of the Division of Graphic Design at Alfred University from 1988 until 2000. He died in 2002 aged 71.

Specifications

Title: Fred Troller Design
Size: 297mm × 210mm
Pages: 256
Printed 5/5 throughout on 157gsm Matt Art FSC paper
Swiss-bound hardback with head and tail bands

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