Thursday 2 December 2010

Designers

Alan Fletcher

Alan Gerard Fletcher (27 September 1931 – 21 September 2006) was a British graphic designer.

He founded the design firm Fletcher/Forbes/Gill with Colin Forbes and Bob Gill in 1962. An early product was their 1963 book Graphic Design: A Visual Comparison.

Clients included Pirelli, Cunard, Penguin Books and Olivetti. Gill left the partnership in 1965 and was replaced by Theo Crosby, so the firm became Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes. Two new partners joined, and the partnership evolved into Pentagram in 1972, with Forbes, Crosby, Kenneth Grange and Mervyn Kurlansky, with clients including Lloyd's of London and Daimler Benz. Much of his work is still in use: a logo for Reuters made up of 84 dots, which he created in 1965, was retired in 1992, but his 1989 "V&A" logo for Victoria and Albert Museum, and his "IoD" logo for the Institute of Directors remain in use. In last years he designed the logo for the Italian School of Architecture "Facolta` di Architettura di Alghero", (University of Sassari).

He created iconic brand identities for clients such as Pirelli and the V&A and transformed book design in his role as consultant art editor to Phaidon Press with his spirited, witty and very personal style.

Examples of his work




More information can be found at  http://www.designmuseum.org/

Theo van Doesburg
1883-1939
European Artist

Theo van Doesburg, was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on August 30, 1883. His first exhibition of paintings was held in 1908 in the Hague. In the early 1910s he wrote poetry and established himself as an art critic. From 1914 to 1916 van Doesburg served in the Dutch army, after which time he settled in Leiden and began his collaboration with the architects J. J. P. Oud and Jan Wils. In 1917 they founded the group De Stijl [more] and the periodical of the same name; other original members were Vilmos Huszár, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, and Georges Vantongerloo. Van Doesburg executed decorations for Oud?s De Vonk project in Noordwijkerhout in 1917.The Landesmuseum of Weimar presented a solo show of van Doesburg?s work in 1924. That same year he lectured on modern literature in Prague, Vienna, and Hannover, and the Bauhaus published his Grundbegriffe der neuen gestaltenden Kunst (Principles of Neo-Plastic Art). A new phase of De Stijl was declared by van Doesburg in his manifesto of Elementarism, published in 1926. Van Doesburg returned to Paris in 1929 and began working on a house at Meudon-Val-Fleury with van Eesteren. Also in that year he published the first issue of Art concret, the organ of the Paris-based group of the same name. Van Doesburg was the moving force behind the formation of the group Abstraction-Création in Paris. The artist died on March 7, 1931, in Davos, Switzerland.


Theo van Doesburg

1883-1939

European Artist

Theo van Doesburg, was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on August 30, 1883. His first exhibition of paintings was held in 1908 in the Hague. In the early 1910s he wrote poetry and established himself as an art critic. From 1914 to 1916 van Doesburg served in the Dutch army, after which time he settled in Leiden and began his collaboration with the architects J. J. P. Oud and Jan Wils. In 1917 they founded the group De Stijl [more] and the periodical of the same name; other original members were Vilmos Huszár, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, and Georges Vantongerloo. Van Doesburg executed decorations for Oud?s De Vonk project in Noordwijkerhout in 1917.The Landesmuseum of Weimar presented a solo show of van Doesburg?s work in 1924. That same year he lectured on modern literature in Prague, Vienna, and Hannover, and the Bauhaus published his Grundbegriffe der neuen gestaltenden Kunst (Principles of Neo-Plastic Art). A new phase of De Stijl was declared by van Doesburg in his manifesto of Elementarism, published in 1926. Van Doesburg returned to Paris in 1929 and began working on a house at Meudon-Val-Fleury with van Eesteren. Also in that year he published the first issue of Art concret, the organ of the Paris-based group of the same name. Van Doesburg was the moving force behind the formation of the group Abstraction-Création in Paris. The artist died on March 7, 1931, in Davos, Switzerland.

Examples of his work














Creative Review Video.

In the second of our studio visit films (made in collaboration with Order), we spent some time at the South London studio of independent letterpress printer, Kelvyn Smith, as he prepared for the Reverting To Type letterpress exhibition taking place in London's Standpoint Gallery in December...


Mr Smiths letterpress (not me!)



Very interesting video regarding letterpress typography. It ties in with the type inscripted on the headstones which I took.

Would be an interesting experiment to try.

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