Franco-Swiss designer and graphic artist Jean Widmer has died at the age of 96, the Centre Pompidou in Paris has announced. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox Widmer was, among other things, the creator of the famous logo of the Centre Pompidou and designer of the signage on French motorways. Widmer, born in 1929 in Frauenfeld, northeastern Switzerland, settled in Paris in the mid-1950s where he became a graphic designer and designed the identity of various cultural venues such as the Musée d'Orsay and the Institut du Monde Arabe. "Jean Widmer transformed the history of graphic design and visual communication," wrote the Centre Pompidou in a statement. The most famous creation of this pioneer of minimalism dates back to 1977 when he conceived the logo of the newly opened Centre Pompidou: five black lines on a white background, crossed by a diagonal representing the five different floors of the building and its escalator. This logo, which is still used by ...
