Date: 21st March 2017

Time: 12:00 pm

Venue: IDS, Building 8, GTU, 75 Kostava Street, Tbilisi 

Event: Importance of Innovation and Design in Marketing 

Format: Lecture

Speaker: Prof. Nikolaus (Claus) Hipp, businessman, artist and designer

Photo © Nino Akhobadze

Prof. Nikolaus (Claus) Hipp, businessman and artist, co-owner of baby food producer Hipp, Hon. Consul of Georgia for Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, Hon. Pres. of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce for Munich and Oberbayern, professor at Faculty of Business Administration of the Tbilisi State University, has had a long and warm relationship with the Georgian Technical University. For many years he is sponsoring the students and teachers’ scholarships in Germany. His son Stefan is Hon. Professor of GTU and lectures at the Faculty of Agroscience and Bioengineering. Hipp’s company production facilities in Georgia have connections with the GTU engineers.

But most important for the IDS was the fact that Claus Hipp, 79, is a passionate painter and designer himself. The entrepreneur completed his artistic training at an art school in Munich, exhibited his colorful abstract paintings worldwide, and worked as a freelance artist. Since 2001, Hipp has held a full professorship position for a non-representational painting at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (TSSA). Keen musician, he has also been teaching oboe and plays the English horn. During the IDS lecture, Claus presented his 2011 tri-lingual (German-English-Georgian) book ‘It Is Simple, But Not Easy – Compendium for Art Students’, and shared with the IDS students his fascination with the world of graphic design stressing its role in the process of product marketing. Hipp logo, probably the most recognizable among the world’s leading baby food brands, had been created during a lively exchange of ideas between Claus and Frank Gianninoto, the New York designer and author of the iconic 1954 Marlboro red- and-white pack. Prof. Hipp was so much intrigued by the design thinking concept of IDS that has offered to conduct a series of masterclasses for our students in the nearest future. It was only natural that after the lecture the IDS initiated granting Nikolaus Hipp an Honorable Professorship of the GTU. On 8 May 2017, Academic Council of Georgian Technical University declared him Professor Honoris Causa.