Gui Bonsiepe
Gui Bonsiepe [ˈgɪː ˈbo˘nsɪːpe˘] (born 23 March 1934) is a German designer, teacher and writer. Especially in South America and Germany, his publications are considered standards of design theory.
Gui Bonsiepe

Bonsiepe SRL · CC0
- Born
- 1934 · Glücksburg.
- Nationality
- Germany
- Occupation
- designer · university teacher
- Fields
- design · industrial design
- Education
- Ulm School of Design · Jan van Eyck Academie
- Languages
- German
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Gui Bonsiepe [ˈgɪː ˈbo˘nsɪːpe˘] (born 23 March 1934) is a German designer, teacher and writer. Especially in South America and Germany, his publications are considered standards of design theory.
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In this article
Life
Gui Bonsiepe studied at Ulm School of Design and Jan van Eyck Academie. The recorded working language is German. The field of work recorded is design and industrial design. Employment is recorded with Rio de Janeiro State University, Ulm School of Design and Köln International School of Design.
Gui Bonsiepe was born in Glücksburg, and studied Graphics and Architecture until 1955 at Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Munich and at the Technical University of Munich. Until 1959, he studied at Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm) in the Information Department. Between 1960 and 1968, he worked as an assistant professor at Ulm School of Design. After closure of the Ulm School of Design in 1968, Bonsiepe relocated to South America, working as a design consultant. From 1970 to 1973, he led the design team for the operations room of the Cybersyn project. From 1987 to 1989, Bonsiepe worked as an interface designer in a software company in Emeryville, California, United States. From 1993 to 2003, Bonsiepe was Professor for Interface Design at Köln International School of Design (KISD) in Germany. He was Professor for Integrated Media at Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (ESDI), Universidade do Estado de Rio de Janeiro, where he planned and established a Master of Design study program. He was one of the three keynote speakers at Design History Society Annual Conference (2013) at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, along with Sujata Keshavan and Tapati Guha-Thakurta. He had visited NID in 1979 too as one of the speakers in United Nations Industrial Development Organization – ICSID conference. He lives in La Plata, Buenos Aires and in Florianópolis, Brasil.
Publications
• Precariousness & Ambiguity: Industrial Design in Dependent Countries in: Design for Need, edited by J. Bicknell and L. McQiston. London: Pergamon Press, 1976. • A ‘Tecnologia’ da Tecnologia foreword: Darcy Ribeiro ed. São Paulo: Edgard Blücher, 1983. • On some virtues of design. Publications of the Jan van Eyck Academy. Maastricht: Jan van Eyck Academy, 1998. • Interface: An approach to design edited by Dawn Barrett. Maastricht: Jan van Eyck Academy, 1999. • Diseño y crisis Valencia: campgrafic, 2012. • On the Heteronomy of Design in a Post-Utopian Age in: After the Bauhaus, Before the Internet: A History of Graphic Design Pedagogy, edited by Geoff Kaplan, 264-70. New York / San Francisco: npp No Place Press, 2022. • The Disobedience of Design, edited by Lara Penin. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Gui Bonsiepe”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q90584: Gui Bonsiepe
General reference · Wikidata
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Personal profile on KISD website.
- 2.Gui Bonsiepe. hfgulmarchiv.de.
- 3.Timeline on www.hfg-archive.de.
- 4.Bonsiepe, G., (2009), Entwurfskultur und Gesellschaft, Birkhäuser Basel, Boston, Berlin. pp.35–62
- 5.CV on personal website.
- 6.Society, Design History. The 2013 Design History Society Annual Conference Report – Blog. Design History Society.
- 7.Tomas Maldonado y Gui Bonsiepe en el ciclo de encuentros Proyectos de la Modernidad. 2007-12-12.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
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