Product designer Jochen Gros was Professor for Design Theory at the Offenbach College of Design from 1974 – 2003. He published papers on the theory of product language and headed projects of the Federal Ministry for Education & Research on computer-controlled furniture construction and on advancing ornaments by new technologies. Since his emeritus he has mainly been occupied with developing pictogram systems and icon fonts, which serve as picture message per e-mail or mobile phone and are simultaneously conceived as basis study for a new ornament. The furniture designs by Jochen Gros have been included in the permanent collections of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt and the Kestner Museum Hanover. His pictograms are documented in the books »icon-language.com« and »Icon-Chinesisch«.
Furthermore Jochen Gros has developed an experimental project for a »new picture type«, which he introduced during the opening speech at Typo Berlin 2004.