Graphic Journey Blog

Margaret Calvert: The right direction

When I started this blog a decade ago, I used the word 'Journey' in the title. This was long before it became one of those ubiquitous, annoyingly overused words, applied willy-nilly to everything.

But no matter, I still love Graphic Journey. And the design of the title banner above echoes the iconic motorway signage system that can be seen on any journey when driving around Britain.

The 1960's graphic designer's toolkit. Nothing to plug in. nothing to crash.

As every designer knows that signage system was devised and designed byJock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert back in 1965. In those days the graphic designer's toolkit consisted of a scalpel, tracing paper, Cow gum, a Rotring pen, a wooden T square, and when a mouse, was still a little furry creature.

Our National treasure Margaret Calvert.

Jock Kinneir died in 1994, but Margaret Calvert is very much with us and is the graphic design fraternities National treasure. Margaret still hand draws everything she designs, sitting at her desk at her cosy North London studio. And that is exactly where I recorded an hour-long conversation with her in 2015. In it, she talked about her childhood in South Africa, her design education and the story behind our classic motorway signage system, and a lot more besides. She told me she hated being interviewed, but as you will hear she tells a fascinating story. Listen to it HERE

Nostalgic treasure trove

Smells can instantly transport you back to a long-forgotten time. For me, it’s coal. As a boy, I would stand by the delivery lorries that would arrive weekly in my street and inhale that special natural coal smell. I loved it, but you rarely smell it today.

The other thing was ‘Evening in Paris’, a perfume that my grandmother wore. That takes me right back to her in the 1950s.

The other memory-tugging area is graphics via packaging, comics, magazines and TV commercials.

Stepping inside the Museum of Brands is like taking a trip in the TARDIS – your life is rolled back to a seven-year-old as you walk through a labyrinthine series of shop-like windows filled with wonders organised in chronological order. As you stroll through the curving passageways, you are suddenly pulled up in an instant moment of childhood nostalgia.

This was the first piece that founder Robert Opie brought back in 1963 from a vending machine in Inverness. How he didn’t eat them I don’t know, but it was to be the start of a passion that has driven him ever since. Over 50 years, he has amassed an astonishing and important collection of social history through these historical brands and packaging.

Victorian craft based maximalism.

I am always astonished when looking at the maximalism that the Victorians lavished on their advertising and the sheer craft in its execution.

Above the good old Radio Times using some great illustrators back in the 1930's, something that continued right up to the 1980's before it took a nose dive.

And in a bleak, post-war, bomb-damaged and rationing Britain, the colourful packaging and advertising promoted a new, optimistic future to keep the spirits up. And for me, the best thing was the futuristic ‘Eagle’ comic, so ahead of everything else at that time, with Dan Dare’s stories of adventure and space travel.

My bedtime passion, The Eagle.

And above and below the perfect bedtime warm drink.

And a mouthful of Fruit Gums.

The wonderful thing about the Museum of Brands is that while I am transported back to my childhood (with an ear to the radio listening to ‘Journey into Space’), others in the labyrinth are enjoying the memories of their own childhoods, be it in the ’60s or the ’00s. There is something for everyone, no matter their age.

When leaving the main collection area, you are led through to a space for viewing television commercials, from 1956 when they first aired on our TV screens, starting with “tingling fresh SR toothpaste” in glorious black and white.

See the very first British SR toothpaste TV commercial broadcast in 1956 

For schools, it is a wonderful history lesson. For any graphic designer, it should be compulsory. I loved it, was moved by it and wanted the whole collection.

Followed by Murraymints 'There too good to hurry mints'.

Alongside the packaging, you can see toys, TV tie-ins, posters, advertisements, books and all sorts of written ephemera in this delightful little museum. For more information click here.

Books, books, books: I love them

London studio where books are always close by.

I was recently ask to contribute to the always fascinating It's Nice That website.

They wanted me to share books that have a special meaning to me. You can find out what they are here.

Hipsterville: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

On one of my regular walks, I opted to head towards Hoxton, know as 'hipsterville' and one of the creative quarters of London. My route started from my base in Clerkenwell in an easterly direction

Three new buildings close to Hoxton, all wanting to be noticed.

Meandering my way there I came upon a particular grouping of astonishingly ugly new buildings. It is another example of the developer's habit of tracking the creative community, responsible for single-handedly rehabilitated often depressed neglected areas, and it doing so they are the makers of their own demise. It happened to Clerkenwell and Borough over the past two or three decades. Hoxton, in addition to its creative community, has seen Cross Rail contributing to the arrival of many estate agents there to hike up property prices and reap their profits.

And yet more added to Silicon Roundabout .

Though the inevitable escalating rents, we will once again see the departure of the very people responsible for invigorating these places by making them so appealing in the first place with their coffee shops, alternative stores, bookshops and gallery spaces.

In the heart of Hoxton all buzzing with of interest.

Amazingly I have worked in central London since 1960. Back then there was still bomb damage from WW2. I watched the many hurriedly built ubiquitous glass office blocks going up, especially surrounding St Pauls, close to where I was working at the time.

1960's office development surrounding St Paul's.

I also watched those same office blocks demolished in the 1990's. When I scan the London skyline today I am astonished how ugly it is becoming. It seems like some kind of 'mine's not only bigger than yours but a different shape', it's so depressing.

London's increasingly cluttered skyline.

Architects and their egos know no bounds, and whether you like it or not, we have to endure the sight of their handy work for many, many decades. Thank God that there are still some that have the sensitivity to understand how people want to use a building and how they need to feel inside. 

This image epitomises how modern developments oppress precious pieces of our history.

At its very best architecture can be an uplifting and emotional experience, but it can also be a harsh and alienating one. 

Paule Vézelay: Life imitating art

I was rather surprised by the remarkable similarity between Orla Kiely's 'Stem' fabric, designed in 2000.

And Paule Vézelay's 'Composure' fabric (above) designed in 1967. 

Paule Vézelay in 1984

The painter, sculptor, etcher and book illustrator Paule Vézelay was born and brought up in Bristol as Marjorie Watson-Williams. In 1911 she went to the Slade School of Fine Art but soon left finding it old hat and meaningless to her. She moved to Paris in 1926 and changed her name to Paule Vézelay, and submerged herself in abstraction. She joined the Société Abstraction-Création in 1934 and a friend of Hans Arp and his wife Sophie Taeuber-Arp, exhibiting with Arp and Wassily Kandinsky in Milan in 1938. At the outbreak of war in 1939 and to avoid internment by the Nazi's she returned to Bristol where she recorded bomb damage and barrage balloons. In the 1950s she designed textiles for a number of companies including Heal's. She continued to paint until her death in 1984.

Above Vézelay's abstract  shapes and colour combinations from the 1950's.

There is a wonderful little documentary film made in1984 where Paule Vézelay is interviewed by a very non-Assie sounding Germaine Greer (Link at foot of this post). Paule comes across and fiercely independent but with grace and modesty. She maintains the artists should never marry. I think she is right about that.

A Kiely cushion.

Meanwhile, Orla Kiely has built up an empire from one simple graphic shape (often referred to as 'iconic') by applying it to just about everything she can lay her hands on.

The Paule Vézelay fabric 'Variations', designed in 1954

On the other hand, Paule Vézelay worked every single day from the 1930s to her death in 1984, not long after the documentary was made. And it was only late in her life that was she recognised in the UK. She never made her fortune but her work was her life. She never stopped.

For the documentary click HERE

Happy,Happy!

Architecture: Living in the past

Dorset's grandest Waitrose in Poundbury, Dorset.

I have been living in Dorset since the late 1980’s. Ten miles north of my home is the town of Dorchester, famed for the great novelist Thomas Hardy and also the birth of trade unionism, with those six Tolpuddle Martyrs arrested on trumped-up charges and marched to the town to await trial in 1834 and their eventual deportation to Australia. 

Another less significant event but with some impact started 24 years ago. Just a few miles west of Dorchester, the first houses of a new development appeared. It’s called Poundbury: the brainchild of future monarch Prince Charles and originally master-planned by the urban theorist and planner Léon Krier in the 1980s. With a cohort of ardent neoclassical architects (Quinlan and Francis Terry, James Gorst, John Simpson and Ben Pentreath) on board, the planned project is 50% completed. In the not-too-distant future, Poundbury will, I feel sure, dwarf the main town in size. 

Variations of residences.

It is the realisation of Prince Charles’s particular take on architecture, and the resulting development is loved and loathed in equal measures. This model town consists of 35% social housing; is apparently designed as a sustainable development (including being carbon-neutral); and sits proudly facing Maiden Castle, a historic Iron Age hill fort. 

Over the years, I have followed Poundbury’s progress with interest. Every six months or so, I drive around its ever-expanding streets to look at vistas new. The place is now filled with every conceivable variation on 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century faux architectural styles, from Scottish baronial villas to Palladian mansions and from flint-clad cottages to miniature icing pink Gothic castles. More recently, Victorian ‘Shad Thames’-style warehouses have appeared, along with white-rendered Rennie Mackintosh facsimiles. Think of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis’s creation Portmeirion in Wales, built between 1925 and 1975 in the style of an Italian village (made famous in the TV series ‘The Prisoner’), and you’ll get the picture.

The genesis of Poundbury, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis’s Portmeirion in Wales created in 1925.

Another inspiration, Seaside in Miami USA built in 1982 designed by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.

Two images of Thamestown in Shanghai, China built in 2006.

It is the kind of model town replica that you find in gated communities in the US (Seaside in Miami was an early inspiration) or elsewhere, such as Thamestown in Shanghai, created in 2006 to give Chinese visitors a little piece of cobblestoned Tudor England, without having to leave their country. 

Some variations in Poundbury's homes.

Dorset’s Poundbury has been described by the Ray-Ban-sunglasses-wearing architectural writer Jonathan Meades as a “cottagey slum” and a “Thomas Hardy theme park for slow learners”. He doesn’t mince words, that Mr Meades. But I feel sure that the young/old fogey Jacob Rees-Mogg would feel very much at home here amid the Hunter-wellies-wearing, Labrador-walking, Farrow & Ball inhabitants.

I was firmly against the notion of a pastiche town: Dorset’s own Disneyland. But while there are downsides (and I’ll come to those a little later), there are many things that I actually like. As I toured around last week, I was struck by the clever organic flow of the place and the juxtaposition of sizes and styles that rub together in a rather pleasing way. There are increasingly more focal points that help to lead you to central areas. The roads are wide and there are no yellow parking restriction lines to be found anywhere. Signage is kept to a minimum and the shops have discreet branding. The building materials used are a myriad of variations of real Portland and reconstituted stone, flint, and varieties of every conceivable brick colour and texture; some houses have blocked out windows to replicate the window tax era of the 17th–19th centuries. There is a great deal of painted fibreglass too, aping decorative cast iron. Standing in the middle of it all, you could be forgiven for imagining that you were on a Hollywood backlot. It is all clever movie-production-style fakery. 

The first buildings that went up in Poundbury back in the ’90s lacked finesse, with details rather too chunky, like mean-sized windows with overly chunky glassing bars. Many of those early dwellings are now showing signs of wear and tear in this fairly high up and exposed part of Dorset. But as the development has evolved, newer architects have appeared on the scene with keener eyes for detail. One of these is Ben Pentreath: a neoclassicist but with a modern twist, rather like his hero, the late interior designer David Hicks. Pentreath trained at the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture, going on to work a five-year stint in New York and then with the Prince’s Foundation. So, it’s no surprise that he is well immersed in helping to realise this later phase of development of Poundbury with many other like-minded practitioners.

One of Ben Pentreath's creations in Poundbury.

But if you look outside of this regal utopia at the many smaller developments dotted around Dorset, you will find either miserable little redbrick boxes akin to the old TV soap ‘Brookside’ slapped up by Wimpey or Barratt Homes for maximum profit for minimum effort or equally small local-stone-built affairs to approximate a regional feel.

This is the typical alternatively new builds to Poundbury. Grim little boxes.

Zero design aesthetic. Minimum effort for maximum profit. These are to be found from John O' Groats to Land's End.

But all are mean-spirited and soulless. What remains tugs on the coattails of Prince Charles’s ‘Little England’ view of the world. There is not one notable contemporary development of merit. So, I guess if I had to make a choice between the incredibly depressing Brookside boxes or the Poundbury film set, I’d choose the latter. No, I wouldn’t: I’d keep looking. But it sums up the depressing state of 21st-century British domestic architecture.

What saddens me is that had the Poundbury idea been put in the hands of a group of really exciting contemporary architects, with a real interest in developing new thinking in domestic architecture, it could have been fantastic. You’ll find an example of what I mean in Harlow, Essex, in a scheme designed by architect Alison Brooks.

Alison Brooks Architects new builds in Harlow in Essex.

She has taken her inspiration for the old black-tarred wooden Essex barns for her affordable housing scheme. Architects like her, Stanton Williams, Studio Partington and Hamson Barron Smith, along with a bunch of Scandinavian and Japanese architects, create modern, people-centred homes, rather than the egotistical ‘trophy building’ lot, who are screwing up London’s skyline at every turn.

Above a range of domestic home designs from the UK, Europe, US and Japan showing the alternative possibilities to living in the past.

While I’m at it, back in Dorchester, there is a so-called ‘contemporary’ development being built on the site of the old Eldridge Pope brewery. But cutting-edge modernism it ain’t: it is altogether mundane and extremely disappointing in appearance and is another lost architectural opportunity for the county. 

Above part of Dorchester's very disappointing architectural design for Brewery Square development.

What amuses me most about Poundbury is that is at its heart and at the highest point of the centre of the town is a Waitrose – no way could it have been a Lidl. It started its life as a ‘little Waitrose’, but last year it expanded to three times its original size, packed to the hilt with Duchy produce in every aisle and with its own cafe, where customers clad in Barbour puffer jackets and cavalry twill or heavyweight Yorkshire corduroy trousers sit sipping their free coffees while reading The Telegraph. It is a microcosm and a seeming bastion of retired, well-heeled, white, middle-class middle Englanders, waiting patiently to get their country back in 2019 from those ghastly foreigners. 

The Queen Mother looks down on her grandson's creation.

And as one looks through the Waitrose cafe windows, just beyond to Queen Mother Square, there stands a giant statue of the late queen mother looking down on passers-by to reinforce the feeling that all is well and that one is perfectly safe and secure in Dorset’s Poundbury.

No, it's not Jonathan Meads in the shades by Prince Charles on one of his regular visits to his model town.

Amazingly, after all of Prince Charles’s views about modernist architecture, made abundantly clear in his 1988 BBC documentary ‘A Vision of Britain’, he is now, along with Léon Krier, apparently planning a new project: a small modernist town. Krier added: “We will show them how to do it.” 

Watch this space.

Since writing this post The Guardian published an interesting piece on the future of home building in the UK.

Thank you.

Design and conscience.

Above a student sleep-in at Hornsey College of Art in 1968. 

 Buckminster Fuller gives a lecture during a sit-in at Hornsey College of Art in 1968.

Back in the 1960s, British student activism came to the fore. The Vietnam War, racism and more-local frustrations (like student fees and representation) rose above the parapet. There were sit-ins, sleep-ins, lock-ins and all manner of demonstrations throughout the ’60s. One far quieter protest came in 1964 from a group of graphic designers, photographers and students, headed by Ken Garland. They put their names to a manifesto entitled ‘First Things First’. It rallied against the consumerist culture. They were frankly appalled by many of their industry colleagues chasing and pandering to the commercial pound. This group of manifesto-waving comrades were more about using their creative skills to better society, rather than damage it. Here is that original manifesto:

In 2000, 36 years on from ‘First Things First’, the cause was taken up again by the Canadian magazine Adbusters; after spotting an article in Eye magazine, they decided to reprint the ‘First Things First’ manifesto. This culminated in the manifesto being updated for the 21st century and another group, once again wanting the creative community to adhere to similar principles, got out their pens and signed it.

They were Jonathan Barnbrook, Nick Bell, Andrew Blauvelt, Hans Bockting, Irma Boom, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Max Bruinsma, Siân Cook, Linda van Deursen, Chris Dixon, William Drenttel, Gert Dumbar, Simon Esterson, Vince Frost, Ken Garland, Milton Glaser, Jessica Helfand, Steven Heller, Andrew Howard, Tibor Kalman Jeffery Keedy, Zuzana Licko, Ellen Lupton, Katherine McCoy, Armand Mevis, J. Abbott Miller, Rick Poynor, Lucienne Roberts, Erik Spiekermann, Jan van Toorn, Teal Triggs, Rudy VanderLans and Bob Wilkinson. It was then co-published by Adbusters, Emigre and the AIGA Journal in North America and by Eye and Blueprint in Britain, with further connections in the Netherlands and Form in Germany.

Now we are 17 years into the 21st century and it is clear that many of the concerns of that little 1964 band of brothers (and sisters) have been proved right in their fears of the state of Britain. We are an obese, hyperactive, commercially obsessed society. The digital age has disrupted virtually every area of our daily lives. The design community has mushroomed out of all proportion to the extent that for every designer with a moral compass in harmony with ‘First Things First’ and with the desire to benefit society, there are far more who are happy and hungry enough to use their skills to help to peddle useless crap by designing packaging to encourage children to eat and drink products overfilled with sugar, salt and fat, helping to make Britain and increasingly obese and unhealthy society. Ironically, many of the design presentations of this never-ending parade of products are featured on the Design Week website, often as exemplars of creativity, without one word of criticism.

More sinisterly, every Internet search we make is being tracked and the information sold to advertisers, which in turn will relentlessly target us to buy, buy, buy. This was far from the imaginings of Ken Garland and Co. back in 1964. It would have seemed like an unbelievable world of horrific science fiction.

I’ve often wondered how many of those original (sadly, some no longer with us) 1964 signatories, and the later 2000 group, have adhered to the promise they all signed up to, steering well clear of promoting commercial ‘striped toothpaste’, cat food, stomach powders, etc., along with all those other areas the manifesto so bitterly despised. It would seem that of all of them, Ken Garland clearly has.

If you have any views on this do drop me a comment.

Further reading on ‘First Things First’ 

The original Eye magazine story here

And the 2000 update here

Scarborough rock: Part 2: Where did all those years go?

Me on the right with Dr Rock (Charles White)

Following on from last week here is the second part of my appearance on BBC York's Dr Rock here.

For Part One click here.