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First Look: Fred Troller
Fred Troller Collection. IBM Direct Access Storage Devices promotional booklet, 1970s.
January 18, 2013

First Look: Fred Troller

Recently, we were thrilled to add work by Fred Troller to our collection. Troller, a Swiss designer who emigrated to the US, was an exemplary practitioner of the Swiss style, helping to bring its influence to American design. As design director for pharmaceutical company Geigy in the mid-1960s, Troller oversaw the avant-garde promotional materials that represented a true distillation of Troller’s sensibility.


Gray cover of a darkened image of a sitting baby, contrasted with a light-exposed baby overlay, who looks to the right.


 
Fred Troller Collection. Geigy brochure cover from “Fred Troller Associates” promotional booklet.

(Top) Three flat boxes with a black and white ripple design, and a small circular case titled "Olympia." (Bottom) A flat rectangular box in black, with variations of small, white compact shapes on it's cover.


 
Fred Troller Collection. Packaging for Olympia typewriter accessories and Geigy pharmaceutical samples from “Fred Troller Associates” promotional booklet.

After leaving Geigy in 1966, Troller set up shop in Rye, New York, where he created work for American Airlines, IBM, Westinghouse, and Doubleday, among others. His paintings and sculpture were exhibited at the Grace Borgenicht Gallery in New York (more on that in a later post). Troller was also a devoted educator; he taught at SVA, Cooper Union, and RISD, and served as chairman of Alfred University’s division of design from 1988-2000.


A cover designed with a floppy disk and computer punch card graphic. The colors are vertically split to blue on the left, and green to the right.


 
Fred Troller Collection. Cover for IBM Viewpoint, July/August 1976.

A booklet page with a red-text description and photo of a storage device.


 
Fred Troller Collection. Interior page from IBM Direct Access Storage Devices promotional booklet, 1970s.