The Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) material covers the range of the HfG’s fourteen academic years and later accomplishment of many of the school’s faculty and a number of its students. When the HfG abruptly closed in 1968, a number of persons had the presence of mind to box documents and artifacts and to deposit them in a storehouse of the Ulmer Museum, which is part of the Cultural mandate of the City of Ulm, one of three governmental funders of the HfG. Eventually, the City of Ulm established the HfG-Archiv as part of the City Archive. This, of course, is the prime depository of the archaeology of the HfG and is expected to remain so. Because of the nature of the base of the HfG-Archiv’s collection, there is the possibility that the Huff papers include items that the HfG-Archiv does not have. For one, the HfG-Archiv does not have original pedagogic notes and aquarelle charts on the theory of color that were written expressly for Huff by Bauhäusler and HfGer teacher, Helene Nonné-Schmidt.

Huff’s HfG papers include the following: All issues of ulm, the Journal of the Hochschule für Gestaltung; catalogs of exhibitions from during the tenure of the HfG and afterwards; addresses of Tomás Maldonado on the pedagogic direction of the HfG; student application brochures; a number of the published annual curricula; a number of departmental schedules sheets, showing the hourly distribution of study; original photographic prints by Huff, Hans G. Conrad, and Hans Schmied of the life of the school; whole newspaper pages with articles about the school, including the 1957 expulsion of Max Bill; original posters of Aicher, Mavignier, and Vordemberge-Gildewart; original graphic pieces, as calling cards and New Year’s greeting cards; personal letters to Huff from Max Bill, Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher, Tomás Maldonado, F. Vordemberge-Gildewart and wife, Isle Leda, Helene Nonné-Schmidt; color slides of the HfG and of Rotis. (There are also letters from Bauhäusler Josef and Anni Albers, Walter Gropius, Marguerite Wildenhain.)

Post-HfG papers are included as a part of this collection—especially the research and design work carried out by Otl Aicher at his compound in Bavaria, Rotis—for which a modern typeface, designed by Aicher, was named. There are papers of students’ post-HfG activities, including Gunter Schmitz, Hans (Nick) Roericht, Shutaro Mukai, Thomas Dawo, Peter Gautel, and others. There is significant documentation on the school’s closing in 1968. Included as part of the collection are 195 Pearwood models of crystals, made by Dr. F. Krantz of Bonn, Germany.