From Caveman to Spray Can

In November 2005 I gave the following address at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). It was called 'From Caveman to Spray Can : A Graphic Journey. It was the latter sub heading that I reused to name this blog. The occasion was  my becoming Master of the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry. A bit of a mouthful I know but the  calibre of people within that Faculty was, and still is, extremely humbling for a working class kid from  Dagenham. Anyway, there I was standing in the beautiful Great Room, on first floor of the RSA's  elegant  John Adams building, looking out at a sea of expectant faces. On rereading the text now I was  struck by the  number of topics that  have become major 'issues'  in recent years. I thought I'd republish it here as you  just might like to sit down with a cup of coffee for a rather long read for a change, with me  being serious,  well a bit.  I've added a few comments in  green.

NOVEMBER 2005 RDI ADDRESS GIVEN AT THE RSA

John Ruskin said that

 ‘Industry without art is criminal’.

Tonight I am going to talk about graphic design. The very thing I have been doing for over 40 years. And the more I contemplated aspects of it, the more

 concerns I had.  But more of that later.  First I’d like to take you on a little graphic journey.

In his excellent, and I would say definitive book, ‘Graphic Design: A Concise History,' Richard Hollis states that graphic design, as we now know it, started in the late 19th century with the introduction of more sophisticated and immediate forms of printing.  Well, in a way that’s true. But I’d like to go back just a little further - 20,000 years BC in fact. Imagine we are standing inside a dark cave in Pech Merle, Southern France. There in front of us, on the wall, is a beautiful painting of a horse.

But as wonderful as this is, and it is. It is not what I am looking at. Just above it is a graphic representation of a hand.

 

The hand of the artist. A symbol of mankind. I find this both ‘profound’ and very moving.  For me this hand-print is the very essence of graphic design. The ability to communicate through a simplified image. It is saying ‘I did this’. And it is this visual short hand that we, the graphic designers, give to society.  In doing so, we help shape the trends and messages of every day life. From this humble cave wall came other more sophisticated walls on which to express ideas and stories. From the Egyptian temples

 and Greek and Roman villas to the Italian renaissance frescos and more. In a way the RSA has its own

 cave painting of sorts — right here in this room. You can’t see it at the moment as we are plunged into

 darkness. But later look up and around you at James Barry’s narrative painting — “The Progress of

 Human Knowledge and Culture” reflecting the aims of the RSA.

Here is another wall that most Londoner’s are very familiar with. Charing Cross Road underground station. This platform length mural was designed and engraved by David Gentleman and tells the story of the construction of the Eleanor cross which gives the station its name. A lot of the work by graphic designers, both good and bad, will end up on walls. This is how things looked back in the 1800s...

 

And today...  

 

Little has changed. To some extent graphic design, in the creative pecking order, is at the bottom of the pile. With architecture, fashion, textiles & furniture design, scaling the dizzy heights, exposing their work to a hungry media who, in turn write about, make TV programmes, exhibitions and publish acres of books on these topics. Graphic design does get the occasional gallery airing. In the “Sixties” exhibition at Tate Modern a year or so back they actually featured graphics. But it was set up next to the till. It was just a free ‘sideshow,' not allowed to be part of the precious ‘inner sanctum’ of the main gallery. I found this rather depressing. But in a way, I guess it was the right spot. My sprits were lifted considerably by the exhibition, ‘Communicate,' mounted at the Barbican Gallery last year. For the first time British Graphic design was put into an intelligent cultural context. It was highly successful and drew 48,000 visitors, and now, with the backing of the British Council, is traveling the world.

Let us look for a moment at the impact that graphic design has on our daily life. And as we are on a graphic journey a map would be useful...

 

This is something I’m sure most people in this room know very well. The London Transport Underground Map. It was designed in 1931 and is one of the most iconic pieces of graphic communication ever produced. It became the model for all railway maps worldwide.  But interestingly it was not created by a graphic designer but a 29 year-old engineering draughtsman named Harry Beck. The essence of that original brilliant design is still used by millions of underground travelers every day.  The other notable thing about this map is the typeface used...

It is called ‘Johnstone’ and is still in use by London Transport. Edward Johnstone, a supreme lettering artist, typeface designer and teacher, created it. And it was he who taught Eric Gill – one of our first elected Royal Designers.  Johnston’s talents captivated Gill who said on seeing his work...

 

“ I was caught unprepared. I did not know such beauties could exist” 

One can clearly see the influence on Gill’s own classic typeface, Gill Sans...

 

This was introduced commercially in the 1930s and it has never lost its appeal. It is as popular today as when it was first introduced. It has graced everything from the early Penguin book covers,

 

 wartime posters, railway livery and timetables to the current BBC corporate identity.

 

Which incidentally was created by Royal Designer, Martin Lambie-Nairn. Gill Sans is also the house typeface used by the RSA.  Here is a particularly beautiful use of Gill Sans by Derek Birdsall in his recent typographical layout for the New Testament Bible...

 

The beauty, balance and clarity of a typeface are qualities that we have always recognized in the Faculty since its inception almost 70 years ago. In addition to Eric Gill we had Stanley Morrison, Reynolds Stone, Walter Tracy and Bertholde Wolpe.  Our modern equivalent to these earlier pioneers is, Matthew Carter...

His typefaces have dominated the digital world and are used by millions of people each and everyday when they sit at their computers.  Another Royal Designer, who has created a unique place for himself, as a ‘typographical artist’ is Alan Kitching.  He uses a combination of wood block and metal lettering, lovingly rescued from near extinction, to create some of the most beautiful letterpress pieces being produced today.

 

Despite the introduction of the Macintosh, graphic design is still an area where one can use the most basic materials, and without need to come within a mile of a keyboard or mouse, if that is your desire.

 Alan Fletcher is one of our most prolific and distinguished graphic designers. He positively delights in disarmingly simple, witty solutions, often dispensing with typesetting all together, in favour of his own scratchy handwriting. And it is not unusual to see him foraging in the gutter or waste bins for cast off materials around the Notting Hill area. (Sadly Alan died just a year later  in 2006). Graphic design can also be used as a powerful advocate of social or political causes. Here is just one of the many posters by late Abram Games to promote the war effort on the home front...

And another late and emanate member of the Faculty was F.H.K Henrion who turned his considerable graphic talent to helping the cause of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament...

And you may not be aware that the same hand that produced this delicate pen and wash illustration of Primrose Hill...

 is also the author of this striking campaign protesting against the war in Iraq...

 

When David Gentleman puts down his sable brushes and dons his graphic hat, it can be very powerful. Another of our graphic designers honoured tonight, Seymour Chwast is also able to turn his often-light touch into something very striking to help underscore a political belief...

 Conversely Pearce Marchbank, famous for his hard-edged graphic approach...

 

has mellowed somewhat to create these beautifully elegant and understated package designs for The

 John Lewis Partnership...

Inside of the White range, at the bottom there, is the work of another Royal Designer, ceramists Martin Hunt. And to make it a Royal Designer ‘hat trick’, the design advisor to the John Lewis Partnership is John McConnell. The utter simplicity and stunning beauty of the books designed by Derek Birdsall makes the experience of handling and owning any one of them a pure delight...

And we must not forget the vitally important contribution that the Faculty’s illustrators make in introducing children to the pleasure of reading. I still read the late Edward Ardizzone books to my young daughters. They love the intimacy of his illustrations and their ability to set the mood of the story...

 

He along with Quentin Blake, now the country’s favorite illustrator,

 

and Michael Foreman are notable Royal Designers who have dedicated their lives to enticing and encouraging the young reader on their literary journeys.

My own graphic journey started in the 1950s and like so many boys of that generation, The Eagle comic... 

Unlike many of my Faculty colleagues, I did not have the benefit of attending a prestigious art college. I was for sometime rudderless in finding my creative direction and it was only whilst at evening classes in the early 60’s, where I was studying calligraphy, layout and illuminated lettering – honestly – that I discovered my destiny. Here I am in 1962, second from the right holding up some of my handy work. I seemed to remember doing the S’s... 

During the break. I would escape to the college library.  One evening I stumble on a book called “The Graphic Artist and His Design Problems”. Up until that point I had no idea what graphic design was.  The dynamic use of typography, image and space that I saw on these pages thrilled me to such an extent that it literally changed my life forever...

 

This is the work of the late, great Honoury Royal Designer, Joseph Muller-Brockmann.  And in that book that became so important to me he said of graphic design…

 “Whatever the information transmitted,  it must, ethically and culturally, reflect  its responsibility to society”.

This was in 1961. I never forgot that quote and I have tried, in my own work, to live up to that lofty ambition. But have failed on many occasions.

I want to turn now to some of my personal concerns about graphic design. And its often-unwitting  collaboration with commercial greed. Here the classic egg box...

 

It is still one of the most brilliantly designed structures and is also an environmentally friendly piece of packaging. It is made from paper pulp and was introduced in the 1930's. Its design has not changed much since then. The graphics are printed directly onto the box. It is a little crude because of the textured surface, but somehow it seems to express the right personality for fresh eggs. But a couple of years back, along came some sparky marketing person, who saw the possibility of ‘getting ahead’ in the egg business and suggested the idea of adding a label to the top of the box.

 

This was printed in full glorious colour on high quality paper.  Not satisfied with this marketing advantage, another equally bright spark decided that the whole package needed an upgrade.

 

And so a die cut, outer slipcase, printed in full colour on high quality board was produced to, in essence, obliterate the egg box. Now, we all know that the moment we get the eggs home, off comes the slipcase, and into the waste or recycled bin it goes.  I am the first to recognize the need for packaging, but when it gets to this sort of thing, isn’t it just a bit crazy? And this is just one tiny example of the amazing over production of wasteful, and in my view totally unnecessary, packaging.  (Note: There was a John Lewis big wig in the audience that night and a few months later the egg packaging I described  disappeared  from Waitrose. Over packaging is now high on the govenment's agena)

For 30 of my 40 odd years as a graphic designer I have had the delight of being surrounded by small children. I have six in all.  I am still very much in touch with that magical sense of wonder that children have. I also have the natural parental feelings of protection towards them. And this is where I have to say that there are aspects of what we graphic designers do that concern me greatly and make me rather ashamed.

 

Here is another familiar icon. Today there is an incredible pressure applied to parents to buy their children so called ‘designer labels’. But I don’t what my 7 year old daughter sporting a T shirt with ‘FUCK’ on the front, no matter how much the marketing people try to justify it’s subtle wit, because let’s be honest that is what it is saying. It is not witty or subtle. It is degrading. (In resent years French Connection has curtailed their FCUK branding.)

 

 Just recently I was in my local WH Smith and was stunned to see that there are now Playboy branded accessories aimed specifically at children. Today via the pressure of ‘pester power’ children have become walking advertisements. Many of the teen magazines, from both a design and editorial point of view, along with music videos have sexualised our children at an increasingly earlier age and it is a tragedy to see the once carefree sprit of childhood being eroded away by this calculating collusion of design and marketing.

 The abundance of alcohol, dressed up in fun, funky packaging, has also been targeted directly at the young inexperienced drinker and before you can turn around it could be your own son or daughter who has transformed into one of the many marauding late night drinkers that are making so many of our town centres no-go areas after 10 p.m.  And scenes like this are commonplace...

 

And here we are during the very month that the licensing laws are being extended which will; I have no doubt; contribute to making matters even worse. ( Well, I think we all  know that's exactly what happened)

It is the same designers who make attractive to innocent eyes products filled with sugar, fat, salt and artificial additives that can heighten a child’s activity to such an extent that some have to be prescribed tranquilisers. A far better use of the graphic designers talents would be to devise a universal clear labeling policy imposed on all food retailers so that concerned parents can see at a glance what these products really contain and the harm they can cause. (This has still not been successfully achieved)

It is the same designers who decorated the packaging of MacDonald’s and Burger King with free promotional merchandising gifts, in order to lure our children to the latest Hollywood blockbuster at the local multiplex cinemas, where they will be fed with yet more sugar, fat and salt in vast buckets, while watching movies that mostly dull the mind. And it is the same designers who create staggeringly complex interactive software games, but many so unbelievably violent that they are given an ‘18’ certificate. But still they fall into the hands of 8 year olds, with their parents often oblivious to what their young are viewing on their computers or what it is doing to their impressionable minds.

All of the areas that I have mentioned come into direct contact with the graphic designer. They are ‘designed’. But in my view without any or very little sense of social responsibility. As I have shown earlier the graphic design community can do so much in bringing beauty, intelligence and integrity to our society. But it can also collaborate in helping to degrade life to an increasingly depressing level.

We live in an age where almost everything is prefixed with the word ‘designer’. But the direction of that so-called design is very dubious.

Here is something for the furniture designers with us tonight. I’d like to make a serious point about this advertisement. It is very clear that if you want to improve the quality of your work, you will need to get straight down to the hairdresser tomorrow morning, and request this bouffant effect hair do, in order to give your work that extra edge. Then you might be able to design some furniture like this – whatever it is – in the picture.   This is not a joke or perhaps Paul Smith is being ironic, at least I hope so...

 

The popular television, garden and interior makeover programmes have sent millions to rummage  around B&Q, filling their cars with decking, paints and tiles to give the ‘designer’ finish to their homes. But the true designer, and by that I mean the one with integrity, appears to be an increasingly endangered species. This was brought home to me at a recent meeting here in this very house. I was taking part on an advisory panel about how British industry might engage more fruitfully with designers.  One of the participants from industry suggested that the term ‘designer’ should be dropped as he felt it would put a lot of his colleges off. As they perceived designers as a race apart – aloof and uncontrollable. My response was that he should openly embrace designers, as in my experience they have a disarming clarity of thought. And that design should not be seen as an appendage. It should be at the very heart of a company, becoming part of the fabric. This can only be achieved if the designer is given his place on the board so that all can see that design is genuinely respected. 

Another example of the designers obituary, and perhaps more worrying, was the recent controversial ‘Designer of the Year’ prize being awarded to a non-designer – Support for the candidate came from various quarters, including the RSA Journal. In his article Nico Macdonald Said of the award, “It was a turning point in the UK’s approach to design”. He went on to say that the £25,000 recipient of the prize was, “Unlike previous, more conventional winners because they had applied design as a ‘thought process’ through which to improve various areas of the public sector”.  In the same article Sarah Vaughan-Roberts said that the recipient’s “talent lay in drawing together an inspiring team”. Two points come out of this for me. Firstly it suggests that designers don’t think. And secondly, in the context of the so-called “turning point”, that the designer is now to be seen as merely a cog in an “inspiring team”,  not capable of being considered the creative leader. This mantle has now past on to an ‘organizational impresario’. There have always been highly articulate ‘creative enablers’, or catalyst if you like. But they are not ‘designers’ in the sense of those among us here tonight. But we are told that the design landscape is changing and that these ‘design catalysts’ are every bit as valid as the traditional ‘designer maker’. So can we look forward to seeing a curator being awarded the Turner Prize? Or a film producer winning a BAFTA for best director? - I don’t think so.  And I would point out that our Faculty, along with the RSA had the foresight to tackle the very issue of recognizing an individual, other than a designer, for their contribution to the creative process, back in 1954, by introducing the Bi centenary medal.  And I am delighted for the Faculty that last week the Prince Phillip Designers Prize went to Derek Birdsall, with a special commendation also going to Sir Alex Molton.  Both are 'designers' in the true sense of the word.

I think I can speak for all the designers within the Faculty when I say that the thing that bonds us together is the desire to make things better. To lift the spirits. That is a simple truth. And tonight I am among Royal Designers who have spent theirs lives doing just that – lifting the sprits.

 

And so we come to the end of our little journey together, not really a destination, but more of a visual stopping point. This is another example of man’s expression on a wall and very much part of our

everyday visual experience....

I leave you to decide whether it is as moving or profound as that simple hand print on the wall of that cave 20,000 years ago. 

The writer Hanif Kareshie said

 “To live a creative life is the best life to live”

 I endorse that sentiment wholeheartedly. 

POST SCRIPT:

Since giving this speech in 2005 a few things have happened. The result of the Labour party’s relaxation of the licensing laws has seen an increase in binge drinking and general late night city centre mayhem. The very thing they said would be reduced. At last this year (2013) will see the introduction of a universal traffic light system on the front of food products, but it’s only voluntary. Let’s see if this helps with our increasing obesity problem, especially in children

 

 

Comments

[Ashley McFarland]

An inspiring lecture. Thank you for posting this online.
As a design student, I find your insistence on design that is socially responsible to be compelling and motivating. The sad part is that I haven't heard your sentiments echoed around terribly often.
Your words are something I've followed (even if unconsciously) and it is lovely to see them laid out plainly.
Cheers.

[graham peake]

very very good

[Eunice Gracilia]

This really humbles me as a designer, I hope to grow to be as sensitive as you are, be more of a thinker than blindly doing a job. Thank you for posting this.

[r4 nintendo ds]

Hi,

Nice article......I m interested to do graphic design course , i think its in a boom in the IT industry.....
r4 nintendo ds

[Paul Bardo]

Hi Mike,
Your article above was exactly the reason why I wanted to work with you at CDT, and I am still proud to have done so. Shame there was never any time to actually have these discussions during working hours!