In the nursery years of Carroll & Dempsey, our work was jointly credited, no matter who did what, a bit like that of Lennon & McCartney. But as with that duo it became apparent who penned what. So it was with our respective approach to graphics. Eventually you reach a point where your work becomes a direct reflection of you. Ken's work tended to have a strong direct quality...
We would occasionally be asked to design Time Out covers when the great Pearce Marchbank had fallen out with the publisher Tony Elliott or was unavailable. Above Ken's gritty cover for a feature on a depressed area in South London.
While I was a bit more airy fairy and sensitive...
I would spend ages cutting and pasting type to get it perfectly balanced.
But we complemented each other and continued to jointly crit our efforts and even swapped approaches...
My punchy effort for a Time Out cover on getting fit, from 1982.
As we neared the end of our period at the Bond Street studio, the economic climate was still in bad shape, but we found the confidence to stretch our wings.
A more amusing moment. Me (left) at a photo session for Len Deighton's XPD at Andy Seymour's studio in 1981
In 1982 we dissembled or desks, parallel motion boards (remember those), a cumbersome Grant projector – For those of you who have never seen one here it is...
This device, standing at 2 metres high, was used for enlarging and reducing images and objects. They had to be placed on the bottom flat surface. This is a function that can now be performed in an instant on an iPhone. When the digital age came, there was an elephants graveyard of these clumsy things.
Along with all the books and stuff that attaches itself to the magpies that are graphic designers, we moved just 5 minutes away to the top floor of this building at 243 Regent Street...
Our second studio was on the top floor of this now famous Apple building on Regent Street.
This is the vitreous enamelled sign that was fixed to our front door
For us it was a luxurious and airy 1500 sq. ft open plan space. I handled the studio planning and installed a series of low panels that screened off the main studio to create a reception area. How grown up we were becoming...
Our assistants: L to R: Karen Wilks, Paul Jenkins, Jane, Mark and Peter Barwick 1982.
By this time our client list was increasing and we had widened our areas of activity and were working on projects for the National Trust, Channel 4, The English Tourist Board, Yorkshire Television...
Yorkshire Television promotion poster 1984. Photgraphed by Andy Seymour.
and a number of advertising agencies along with an ever-increasing line of publishing houses, plus the occasional magazine...
A 1982 cover for CSD's long defunct magazine, The Designer, on a topic that still needs attention from the design fraternity.
Below our first Christmas card at the new studio...
In 1982 we were working for Pink Floyd's manager, Steve O'Rourke and had designed the identities for three of his companies...
Above the moving / introduction card we designed for Steve O'Rourke's new companies.
Steve asked us to design a book to accompany what was to be a feature film of The Wall. At the time it was going to be directed by the satirical cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, who had been working with Pink Floyd on their stage sets. However, mysteriously this changed and the director became Alan Parker with Scarfe moving to the designer slot. I had worked for Parker when he was directing Bugsy Malone in 1976. Graphic designer John Gorham tended to work on Parker's films but I would occasionally get thrown a bone. Alan clearly found similarities in our approach to design as can be seen in the illustrated letter he sent me in 1976...
Back to The Wall. Ken and I visited Parker at his production office at Pinewood where he had a small, rather ugly, single story old prefab affair situated at the back of the main Pinewood offices. But Parker being Parker, had the interior decked out like a gentleman's club; Wooden slatted blinds, leather chesterfield sofas, large mahogany desks, old school clocks etc. Whilst there, we were shown a rough cut of The Wall. It was to become a nightmare. It quickly transpired that Walters and Scarfe were not talking to Parker because Parker dropped most of Scarfe's giant 3D puppets sequences that had been shot from the film and planned before Parker came on the scene. The book we were designing became a punch bag. I'd go to see Parker and he wanted less of Scarfe's drawings and more of his movie stills...
Above Alan Parker's vision for the film
I'd then visit Scarfe and he wanted fewer film stills and more of his drawings...
Scarfe's animated sequences from The Wall
Everyone was dissatisfied. Someone said at the time, that having the egos of Alan Parker, Roger Walters and Gerald Scarfe in one room was a recipe for something dramatic to happen. Anyway this is how the book ended up...
As a lifelong lover of film I was keen to get more involved in designing film titles, having created the titles for Ridley Scott's first film, The Duellists in 1977...
Ridley Scott's beautiful first feature film The Duellists 1977
Above part of the title design for the film.
And my original 1977 poster for the film.
Now, I have been very blessed with serendipity throughout my life and no sooner had I started thinking about the titles genre, the phone rings. It was film producer Simon Relph telling me that the playwright David Hare had seen my Duellists titles and wanted me to design the titles for his first feature Wetherby 1985. This is the sales brochure we designed for the film...
By this time our traditional liquid lunches were abating, but we'd often have wine in the studio, which I would not recommend. Things had settled in our ship although the economic climate was still in the doldrums with 3 million people unemployed. But we had a solid block of clients and projects were plentiful.
Over at Pentagram John McConnell was masterminding his restyling of Faber & Faber. At the time the Faber Music division was left out of the frame. During the 80's McConnell gave me most of those covers to design which, I absolutely loved working on. I was still a publishing boy at heart...
Our work was regularly featured in the various publications and design annuals. We started to pick up more awards and in 1984 we won D&AD silvers for the following two book covers...
More assistants joined us an on our 5th birthday in 1984 we sent out this small brochure of our work. Here is the cover...
A beautifully crafted piece of writing by then Saatchi & Saatchi copywriter Peter Barry. (He went on to conquer the Australia advertising scene and recently won a literary award for his first, yet to be published, novel)
In May of 1985 we took a table at the annual D&AD jamboree at the Grosvenor Hotel. That night we got the very best news for any budding design company, we won the D&AD Gold and Silver Award for best book design for this...
All of our publishing heritage came together for this 1984 Royal Mail Year Book that we devised, designed and art directed. We continued to design it for the next ten years. It is still going strong with the format and concept virtually unchanged.
Photograph of the two of us for Campaign magazine in 1984 by Phil Sayer
We felt pretty pleased with ourselves and thought with such a distinguished award under our belt there would be a deluge of work. Not a bit of it. Nothing transpired from the gong. But our name was now very much a part of the design landscape and we continued to do well.
The then D&AD Chairman was Edward Booth-Clibborn - much later he was to have a dramatic fall from grace. But back then he was running various awards including European Illustration, European Photography and involved in many publications squeezed in between organising D&AD. We would often be commissioned by him. The up side was that he would leave you to do whatever you wanted. The down side was, very little in the way of monitory reward, and a lengthy wait for that. Here are a few project from that time...
Above we designed and edited this monograph on the great French illustrator Andre Francois in 1986.
Above our 1986 European Illustration Annual
And the one job that most designers dread. The D&AD Annual. This is our 1986 edition which featured the theme of pedigree with a beautifully shot photograph of a British bull dog by Peter Lavery.
By 1986, employment in Britain started to pick up along with the beginning of an economic boom. We enjoyed a very busy year and at that year's D&AD dinner, we applauded a fellow designer Nicholas Thirkell whom we both knew from our publishing days. He picked up a D&AD Gold Award for his beautiful set of V&A colour books...
The 1986 D&AD Gold and Silver Award for book design
A week later we met up with Nicholas and as a result of that meeting, he became the third partner in our expanding family. And so Carroll, Dempsey & Thirkell was born and a whole new story unfolded. (to be continued). If you haven't read part one click here.