I realised the other day that 2013 marks the 50th year that I have been working in the world of design. So I thought it would be interesting, even fun, to show you a job by my very own hand from every one of those 50 years: the good, the bad and the ugly.
Year: 1963
And a very dramatic one. This happened…
And this was first shown…
The first episode of Dcctor Who was screened.
This was in the charts..
The Beatles From Me To You
And I looked like this 50 years ago...
I was finding my feet as a messenger in a small jobbing studio situated in Ludgate Circus, London. Here it would be my job to deliver finished artwork to advertising agencies and block makers dotted around Fleet Street, when it was affectionately called ‘the street that never sleeps’. It was the beating heart of the newspaper industry and our studio produced artwork for a range of advertising agencies that would send their rough scraps to be transformed into finished, pasted-up artwork. Essex West Studios, with its unglamorous name, was squeezed into a narrow Edwardian building.
It consisted of a photographic studio, a compositor’s room and a photographic retoucher’s floor along with the illustrators, scrapper board and lettering artists. As well as being the one and only messenger, I was the tea and coffee maker and general dogsbody. I spent every spare moment in the studio absorbing all of the different disciplines. I would then practise at home in the evenings at the kitchen table. This went on for months until finally the boss relented and gave me a job as an assistant in the studio. This is the very first thing I was given to do…
We produced all of the artwork under one roof for the shady tycoon, John Bloom Rolls Razor, twin tub washing machine advertisements.
Humble beginnings, but for me it was the beginning of my graphic journey.