About

The A5 Collection is an archive of graphic design history, built and cared for by Jens Müller and Katharina Sussek at their Düsseldorf studio, vista. What began as research for our books has grown into a collection of more than 1,000 posters and over 10,000 further pieces — design manuals, sketches, print samples and original documents that trace how visual identity took shape across the last century.

Collecting and publishing feed one another here. The archive gives our books their material and their evidence; each new book project, in turn, sends us looking for more.

There are two major areas of focus. First is the history of German design, from its pioneering days around the turn of the century and the development of the modernist movement to the return to modernism after 1945. The collection includes extensive holdings from the 1960s and 1970s, including most of the significant West German posters from that period. The second focus is the international history of visual identities. With over 400 standards manuals from around the world, the collection provides a comprehensive overview of 20th-century corporate design. Rare original materials are available for all historically significant brands, including AEG, Olivetti, IBM, Lufthansa, and Apple.

For us it isn't a vault but a working library: historical design literature set beside the original documents and objects, so that overlooked work can be seen clearly again and studied anew.

Parts of the collection travel, too. Drawn from its archives, the exhibition Identity Systems Germany – Rebranding West Germany after 1945 was shown in Japan at kyoto ddd gallery (2024) and ginza graphic gallery in Tokyo (2025), tracing how a democratic, fast-growing West Germany gave itself a new visual image through posters, design manuals and carefully built identity systems.

Our books begin as research — and we love sharing that research beyond the page. Jens Müller and Katharina Sussek give lectures and hands-on workshops for universities, institutions and companies, as well as for anyone with an interest in design, drawing on OPTIK BOOKS and the A5 Collection.

A recurring theme is branding — and what today's brand-building can learn from the past. Our talks span the history of graphic design, from logos and corporate identity to the visual culture that shaped everyday life, always with an eye on what still holds true today. Recent examples include a gallery lecture on modern German graphic design at ginza graphic gallery (ggg) in Tokyo, and an online lecture, Logos and Legends, for the Goethe-Institut in Bangkok.

Our workshops are practical and conversational, and we offer them as both institutional and corporate formats — on-site with you, or here at our studio in Düsseldorf. In Logo Design in Germany and Japan — held on-site in Kyoto, at the Goethe-Institut and with students at Otani University — we explored what logos reveal about culture, history and identity, and compared design traditions across countries. It's a format we're continuing to develop, with further countries and visual cultures to come.

We're always glad to shape a talk or workshop around a specific audience or occasion. To discuss a lecture, workshop or collaboration, just write to us at hello@optikbooks.de.

In most cases, our books are the first publications on a given topic. Consequently, thorough research is a fundamental aspect of our work. We speak with eyewitnesses, visit archives, consult private collectors, and gather materials on the market. This enables us to reveal stories and images related to historical subjects that have never been made public before or have been forgotten for decades.

We are particularly interested in the stories behind designs with which virtually everyone is familiar. In recent years, we have collaborated with many major companies, including PUMA, Lufthansa, Deutsche Bank, ZDF, and Deutsche Bahn. Developing visual corporate histories has become a key focus of our work. A deep understanding of brand heritage is valuable not only as a look back on the occasion of a corporate anniversary but also as an important foundation for future brand developments.

We have also worked with the estates of designers and design studios to develop digital solutions and book publications. If you have a topic of interest, an unprocessed archive, or need our design history expertise, please feel free to contact us at any time.

Katharina Sussek (*1979) and Jens Müller (*1982) have both studied communication design at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf. After graduating, they founded their own design studios independently of each other. In 2019 vista was established. The studio, which has won several national and international awards, works for large and small clients and focuses on projects in the areas of corporate and editorial design. Müller was appointed Professor of Corporate Design in the Department of Design at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts in 2019. In addition to their OPTIK BOOKS titles, they have published numerous graphic design and visual culture books for other publishers, includingLogo Modernism,The Elements of Brand Design, andThe History of Graphic Designfor TASCHEN.