St Brides (1)

Highlights of the St Brides Great British Design conference:
Ken Garland presented work of 5 graphic designers he felt were largely unrecognised by todays standards:
The work of William Slack, designer for the Architectural Press, and later Architectural Review enjoying the freedom of designing for subscribers and throwing conventions of mastheads and cover design out of the window. // Jerry Cinnamon's work for Penguin (The Penguin Book of Decorative Art with it's double title page, 50 Years of Penguin) and Integrated Books. // Ken Briggs' posters for the National Theatre with their hand rendering and expressive illustrated posters before falling into the Swiss design trend of a 3 column grid of Helvetica. // Ken "Graphic design is not cake icing and fancy wrapping" Cambell's Fathers Hook book of letterpress poems, printed on the most fragile of papers and illustrated with some wonderful fold out letterpress artworks, that Ken generously shared with the audience, and Broken Rules and Double Crosses. // The very topical Alfred Wainwright and his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. It takes a certain type of person to produce a series of books over so many years entirely by hand, the level of attention to detail and concentration for such a long period is outstanding (OCD?) and it was interesting to consider the idea that, without knowing it, he was in fact a graphic designer, and publisher and an artist.