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A regatta that took place in 1882 and having no more than twenty participants, has developed over the years into the world’s largest sailing event: Kieler Woche. The first Kieler Woche after World War II was held in 1948, and took on a new form: the prior sporting event acquired sociopolitical and cultural significance, and soon came to be known as both a sporting experience and a popular festival.
Posters for early Kieler Woche events had been previously put together by a non-designer and without a universal identity. In fact, in 1948 and 1949 Niels Brodersen, a municipal worker, who worked in the city’s planning department, created the posters. In the following years, a few attempts had been made by amateur designers to find a permanent trademark for the city of Kiel and the Kieler Woche — without success. In 1952, a public competition with a cash prize was launched to find a design for the event. In subsequent years, up to twelve hundred designs were submitted and judged each time. Kiel graphic arts professor Bernhard Schwichtenberg remembers today: “Anyone who could hold a pen had joined in because of the prize money.” It was no easy task for the jury to select an acceptable design from the multitudes of semiprofessional entries. At the same time, the German post office was having a similar experience when it called for a public competition for the first German postwar stamp and was swamped by roughly ten thousand entries, none of which produced an acceptable stamp. As a result of the overflow entries for Kieler Woche, a procedure, of which is still in practice today, was set into action. The contest would be become a closed competition with five to seven designers invited to take part annually.
The idea of submission by invitation was initially introduced in 1958. This proposal was accompanied by the introduction of a committee of experts consisting of one advertising specialist and two graphic designers who changed each event, one of whom was usually the previous year’s winner. This chosen composition led to an incredibly accurate selection and invitation of experienced industry professionals for the jury. Looking at the list of participants for the individual years shows a broad range of some of the best German and European designers.
The winner of the first closed competition was Hamburg based, Swiss graphic designer Hermann Eidenbenz. Eidenbenz had himself been a guest of Kieler Woche as an expert consultant, and having a sense of the event, put his success down to that fact. It was on his appraisal that the personal invitation system was introduced, which has remained unchanged since, and become tradition. Before the competition begins, all participating graphic artists are invited and briefed by the expert committee on site in Kiel — where they have a chance to experience the events of Kieler Woche for themselves. When the contest opens, each participant is allowed to submit a maximum of three entries, which means that ten to fifteen posters are put before the jury for each year’s competition. Even though this produced only a fraction of the designs in comparison with the previously open competitions, the quality of the entries increased enormously.

The Kieler Woche posters from the 1960s are some of the best graphic material that national and international design produced at that time. Many of the entries carried on to win prizes and commendations in other international design competitions. An undisputed highlight of the Kieler Woche poster series is Hans Hillmann’s 1964 poster, which came close to not being recognized at all. Hillmann had submitted his design for the 1963 competition and ranked under his colleague Hans Michel’s winning entry. However, in 1964 it proved impossible to find a winner among the entries for the competition, and submissions from the previous two years were reconsidered. Hans Hillmann’s brilliant concept was finally implemented the second time around and is now one of the few superb, classic international posters. Triumphant wins and tragic losses make up the history of the Kieler Woche. Over the years it has developed into the competition of competitions. Just being invited to participate is seen as an accolade on the design scene. With their preference for reduced geometrical designs, permanent committee members Bruno K. Wiese and Fritz Seitz made their mark on competitions from the 1970s to the 1990s. Kieler Woche as a combination of city festival and design regatta has developed over the years into the world’s second largest German festival, and soon, it came to need more comprehensive advertising media than the winning poster entries alone.
The shift from a poster competition to a corporate design competition took place in 1974. For the first time, entrants had to devise and design communication and advertising media such as flyers, invitations, and postage meter franking as part of the competition brief. Merchandising items became an essential part of Kieler Woche design alongside the print media in the 1970s and 1980s. It became necessary for the jury to assess designs not just in terms of aesthetics and effectiveness as advertising, but also to ensure that the many articles of merchandise could be universally branded. In 1977, Hans Schweiss of Stuttgart was one of the first designers to develop an extensive corporate design system for Kieler Woche. From that year on, many designers from earlier years continued to create designs this way, in a manner appropriate to the style of the time.
After more than 60 years, the on-going design contest of Kieler Woche is still one of the best-organized and fairest design competitions in the world. Through standardized invitations to bid, and longstanding tradition, Kieler Woche has been able to continue and produce outstanding results when other municipal events were at the mercy of empty city coffers. With great hope, Kieler Woche will continue to be a venue for some of Europe’s best designers to submit exciting designs as they attempt to come to terms with triangles, waves, and shades of blue.  
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