Top Graphic Design, FHK Henrion

Top Graphic Design is a compendium of high-grade work by an elite group of 18 high-grade designers. There isn’t a piece of 80s tat to be seen. The book is by FHK Henrion – a giant of British graphic design. Born in 1914 in Germany, he emigrated to England in 1939, and adopted British nationality a few years later. His work for the Ministry of Information and the US Office of War Information in London established his reputation as a graphic designer and poster artist of verve and skill.

In 1951 Henrion established the design consultancy Henrion Design Associates. He is often cited as a pioneer of Corporate Identity in Britain. His many successful identity programmes include: KLM, Blue Circle Cement, British Leyland and Olivetti. He died in 1990.

What makes FHK Henrion such an important figure in design history is that despite his work with government departments and giant corporations, despite his OBE, and despite his eminence within post-war British design, he retained a radical sensibility. It can be seen in his choice of designers for Top Graphic Design. There are no lightweights: not one of the designers selected is bland, conformist or solely preoccupied with commercial demands. Each of the chosen group offers individuality and, in many cases, adopts an oppositional or contrarian position within commercial design.

As Henrion notes in his introduction: ‘Attempts to be provocative, experimental, sometimes going on purpose beyond the limits of good taste are to be welcomed because they help to create a new visual language which is invigorating and of today. Most of graphic design is ephemeral and it is therefore important that it represents the “Zeitgeist” and is valid and meaningful at the time it is created and shown.’

These are not the views of a grumpy old man, stuffed full of self-importance and industry accolades. His eye for radicalism and non-conformity is evidenced in his choice of the leftist French collective Grapus, the posters of Roman Cieslewicz, and in the genre bending graphics of Gert Dumbar, Shigeo Fukuda, Odermatt & Tissi, Rambow Lienemeyer van de Sand and Wolfgang Weingart.

There’s one more thing worth mentioning about Top Graphic Design: this is Henrion’s obvious high regard for illustration. Some of the artists included here – Henryk Tomaszewski, Morteza Momayez and Jacques Richez, for example – might be included in a book called Top Illustration. Yet Henrion knew that graphic design is at its most potent when it calls on the whole range of visual expression. I think more graphic designers should smoke pipes and wear bow ties.

The Architectural Review, number 1000, June 1980

The Architectural Review, number 912, February 1973

The Architectural Review, number 897, November 1971

The coming together of graphic design and architecture means we get some great posters for lectures by architects; the occasional bit of exemplary signage; a few beautifully designed architecture books; the odd identity for a hot architectural practice; and some interesting experiments into the ways in which architects are incorporating digital technology into their buildings.

Actually, the combining of architecture and graphic design is the subject of the next book from Unit Editions. More details soon. But you can’t help thinking that the two disciplines could do more to combine their skills.

Above are some beautiful covers for the Architectural Review. These three were designed by the late British designer Philip Thompson who designed Penguin covers and co-wrote one of the best books on graphic design, Art Without Boundaries: 1950-70.

Art Without Boundaries: 1950-70

This rare book is my desert island design book. It was one of the founding texts of Tomato, and when I wrote about it in Eye magazine (sorry no link) shortly before Philip Thompson died, I received a delightful handwritten letter from him. He also wrote to Eye about the article. You can read his letter here.

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FW04542: Anthology of Central & South American Indian Music

Q: Can you give me a short description of yourself?

A: I am 43 years old. An educator, entrepreneur and collector.

 
How did you come to meet Ronald?

About 15 years ago I was a customer of a tribal art bookstore in NYC called OAN (Oceanie Afrique Noire). Ron was also a client and the young lady who ran the store thought I would enjoy visiting Ron and seeing his collection of Melanesian Art from New Guinea and Vanuatu. She passed along his phone number and I arranged to visit him at the first opportunity.

 
You have talked about him being a hugely influential figure in your life. Can you say why?

I met Ron at the beginning of my adult life and career. I was just discovering the world of art and design.

When I first visited him in Brooklyn I was blown away by his refined taste, style and drive for perfection in everything that surrounded him. What became quickly apparent was, despite a 40-year age gap, how much we had in common with regard to personal interests and passions beyond New Guinea art.

We were both hi-fi and music enthusiasts, Ron designed his living room to be acoustically excellent for music and appreciating the masterpieces of Melanesian art he had been lucky enough to collect.

We liked the same modern painters and furniture designers. I greatly admire the furniture design of Poul Kjaerholm and Ron and his wife owned several Kjaerholm pieces including stools, lounge chairs and a coffee table.

Ron changed my life by giving me the confidence to trust my decisions and direction in life. He encouraged me to examine all the books about New Guinea art as carefully as possible, and especially to study the photographic images. He also warned me not to put too much stock in the written texts, since many of the authors ‘don’t know what they’re talking about.’ The most important thing for Ron was to look for artistic merit in an individual piece, not the age or provenance. Ron’s passion for New Guinea art was driven by appreciation of artistic merit. He approached New Guinea art with the same perfectionist spirit that informed all his choices. As an intellectually curious man, he was interested in the culture of Melanesian peoples. The pieces he most appreciated were for aesthetic criteria that are universal.

 
We tend to think of him as ‘just a graphic designer’ – but of course he had a wide range of interests. Can you talk about some of these?

Ron was obsessed with hi-fi. He subscribed to all the magazines and read them religiously. He was particularly interested in loudspeaker design, because it is the biggest challenge in the audio chain. Unlike an ‘audiophile’ who is mainly interested in equipment, Ron was a music lover with expansive knowledge of many forms of music. He spent several hours a day in the living room listening to music and looking at books.

He liked going out to eat and to the movies with his wife, Hortense. Whenever I saw him or we spoke on the phone he always had a good movie recommendation.

He was a very intellectually curious person. He introduced me to incredible Baroque music, recorded by perfectionist European record labels like Astree and Alia Vox. I probably would not have discovered these on my own. Ron also loved Indian classical music (and food). For Ron, the great 20th century orchestral masterworks did not stand the test of time. He preferred music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Ron was adamant that jazz never improved beyond King Oliver, this was one of his few opinions I could not embrace.

FW04581: Primitive Music of the World

Ronald has spoken about his joy at finding a client like Mo Asche at Folkways and the freedom he was given, did he talk much about his work with Folkways?

He told me the same things about working with Folkways that he mentioned in the Smithsonian video interviews. He felt Mo Asche found the perfect designer for his jackets because of Ron’s intellectual interest in world culture. He definitely appreciated the creative freedom he was given a great deal.

He shared humorous stories about going to Asche’s office to be paid. Apparently attorneys from the Internal Revenue Service routinely threatened to arrest Asche for non-payment of taxes. Ron said Asche would scream at the IRS people that he was performing a public service and therefore should not be obliged to pay taxes.

 
Within the graphic design world he is a rather shadowy figure. He doesn’t seem to have joined any of the graphic design ‘communities’ or sought to have his work seen in competitions or awards brochures. Was there a sense in which he saw himself as an outsider?

Ron was so confident in his taste and judgement I doubt it ever occurred to him to seek out the approval of a trade organization or his peers. He was proud of the awards and acknowledgment his work received, but he obviously did not need ovations or accolades to give him confidence. He had the album flat for FW36050 (featured in the Unit Editions publication) on the wall next to the bookcase and mentioned to me he had won a trade award for the design.

I know he was amused when the Folkways album cover exhibition was being organized in Canada, but he felt no need to see it himself. When a British fan contacted him with an invitation to a horror convention, (for some iconic book jacket designs early in his career) he declined. He mentioned this to me several times so I know he was gratified for the acknowledgement.

Ron knew exactly what he liked and was a perfectionist and individualist. He liked meaningful, genuine conversation and completely lacked pretension or superficiality. He was very intense and particular, unless you shared his passions there would probably not be much opportunity for dialogue.

He must have believed his work spoke for itself. He did not feel the need to add any further explanation. He was an outsider in the sense that he always sought perfection in his own world, and knew exactly what he liked. That goal put him at odds with an outside world overflowing with mediocrity.

FW09786: Stories & Poems of New Guinea

Can you tell me anything about the house he designed for himself and Hortense?

The house is a space for the art collection, his appreciation for design and hi-fi. Every element is carefully considered down to the smallest details, with nothing unnecessary. He even painted the nails holding his art pieces the same colour as the wall.

The house is located on a quiet street in Brooklyn Heights, a beautiful historic neighbourhood. When Ron bought the lot I think he was ahead of the curve realizing how great the location was. Essentially you have a beautiful, modern, minimalist residence set amongst surrounding brick colonial row houses.

Purity and minimalism were very important for Ron. And this is evident in his graphic design work, the furniture he designed for his home and his surroundings. He often said it is much more challenging to make something minimally, because if there are any errors they will be readily apparent.

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Steven Frost notes: the three album jackets shown above were selected by Ron. The latter two featuring pieces from his collection. The middle jacket is Ron’s Iatmul housepost, a masterpiece of monumental New Guinea art. It is illustrated in Oceanic Art (Kaeppler, Newton, Kaufman). The latter jacket is life size Asmat sculpture of a male ancestor, formerly in Ron’s collection

Steven Frost’s website

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You can order Design/Research 01 – Ronald Clyne at Folkways. Anthology of Folkways album cover art featuring the work of Ronald Clyne (1925—2006) here.

Sensomatic, (Vienna, Austria)

William Taylor Design (Brooklyn, USA)

Matthieu Regout (London, UK)

Martuse Fornaciari (Brazil)

Lucy Brown Studio (Cheshire, UK)

Kmcreative (Chester, UK)

Eva Solano (Madrid, Spain)

fuse8 (Leeds, UK)

Effektive (Glasgow, UK)

Cogdon, Clark & Tranter (Derby, UK)

Form 03

In 2008, I was shown four copies of a magazine called Form, by the designer Mason Wells. I was intrigued, but I could find no mention of Form in any of the standard textbooks. I noted that the magazine had three editors and that one of the trio – Philip Steadman – was also the publisher. I also noticed that no designer was credited.
Today, Philip Steadman is Professor of Urban and Built Form Studies at University College London. He trained as an architect, and has taught at Cambridge and the Open University.

I emailed him and received a warm reply thanking me for taking an interest in Form. He said that he had been the magazine’s co-editor, publisher and designer.

I told him that I wanted to write about Form and he kindly agreed to be interviewed. The conversation below was conducted in his office shortly before Christmas 2009.

Form 10

Q: I’d like to start by asking you how you came to have an interest in graphic design?

A: I was a student in Cambridge. Well, perhaps I should go back even further because my interest in typography started at school. I was at Winchester and an old boy gave the school a printing press and some type and they didn’t know what to do with it. I decided, along with a good friend of mine called Alex Reid, to do something with this printing press. So we printed a book of prayers for the college.

 
What period are we talking about?

This was in the early 1960s. One of the magazines we were involved with [Cambridge Opinion] was about serious social issues. It was designed by Alex. I don’t know where we learnt about typography. Both of us worked for a time at a printers in Winchester when we were doing magazines, as well as our own press work. I suppose we learnt about graphic design informally, through the kind of architectural route, through architectural and design magazines. We never had any formal training.

Later I got involved in another magazine. It was called Image and it was originally a sort of photojournalism publication. It was our attempt to do a Picture Post, that sort of thing. The design was done by my friend Alex, and then I took over.

Cambridge Opinion

Image

Would you say that Image was a precursor of Form?

Yes. I suppose the other side of my involvement in the magazine was that I was interested in contemporary art, and I was particularly interested in Kinetic Art and Concrete Poetry which were two big movements back then. I got to know Stephen Bann and Mike Weaver, who were the two other editors of Form, in connection with an arts society we had in the University.

 
In addition to being the joint editor and the publisher – you were also the designer.

Yes, by that point I was quite far into my architecture studies, so I’d absorbed a bit about Swiss design. But I don’t remember anything conscious about it.

 
I am intrigued to see that you never took a design credit in Form. Was that deliberate?

No. In fact I remember looking through some correspondence and I found a letter from someone rather distinguished, and he said, I wondered who you got to design this?

 
Were you aware of Neue Grafik?

Yes, and there was another magazine, the Ulm bulletin, and if you know Ulm you’ll see that Form is pretty closely modeled on it. It used Helvetica and white space. But I had my own ideas; I wanted the magazine to be square for example. Our plan was to keep publishing it until we made a perfect cube when all the issues were stacked one on top of another.

Neue Grafik

When I first came across the magazine, I was struck by the design – and in many ways the content, too – which seemed to be the mirror opposite of what was going on in 1960s Britain at the time. Back then there was an obsession with American pop culture and later with psychedelic art. How did Form’s Modernist design avoid being diluted by what was happening back then?

The design of the magazine reflects the fact that I was trained as a modern architect at Cambridge School of Architecture and it was pretty straight stuff. You have to remember that it was the early 1960s, and at that point the major reaction against modernism had not set in. That was to come later. There was also right wing criticism of the perceived leftish tendencies of modern architecture, but that too came a bit later.

At that point, for us, Modernism was just the received wisdom. To give you a bit of a flavour of the period, we copied out quotations from Le Corbusier as though they were sacred texts. We lettered them up. At that point the world of pop culture was emerging. A group of us – architects and architectural students – went down to the old ICA on Dover Street and we heard Lawrence Alloway, Reyner Banham and Eduardo Paolozzi, the beginnings of that American appreciation. We sort of liked it in a way, but we weren’t doing it.

What I do remember is that we were very interested in certain people involved in product design – Braun and Olivetti. We weren’t doing product design, but we followed it and when you set up your student room you’d have your Braun heater and that sort of thing.

 
The magazine lasted for 10 issues, ending in October 1969.

Yes. We never did manage to make our cube. What happened was that it was an enormous work for me. It was for all three of us, but I did the design, I organized the printing and I did the distribution more or less single-handedly. I trekked round the bookshops. We had quite a big mail order side, mainly to University libraries and so on. That became quite onerous and also became quite difficult… I ran out of money basically. We had some university grants, we had Arts Council money, and we had a little bit of advertising. So I think a) we ran out of steam, b) we ran out of money, and c) the three of us had dispersed. And in a way, its moment had passed and we all went our own ways.

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This is an edited version of a much longer interview published in U:D/R 02 – Space and structure. Looking at Form, a quarterly magazine of the arts (1966—1969). It is available here and from a few selected bookshops.

U:D/R 02 – Space and structure. Looking at Form, a quarterly magazine of the arts (1966—1969)

‘We thought of Form as a kind of neo-modernist publication, devoted to the early avant-garde as well as to the classic American avant-garde deriving from it.’ Philip Steadman, co-editor Form

Not much has escaped the archaeologists of graphic design: zealous bloggers, Flickr hoarders and design historians seem to have found everything there is to find.

Occasionally, however, something goes unnoticed. This is usually because it doesn’t come from the canon of recognised design greats – or because it doesn’t fit into the pattern of the times from which it sprang.

Form, a quarterly magazine published in Great Britain between 1966 and 1969, is one of those misfit artefacts. The co-editor, publisher and designer was Philip Steadman. Today, Philip Steadman is Professor of Urban and Built Form Studies at University College, London. He trained as an architect, and has taught at Cambridge and the Open University. He is the author of books on geometry in architecture, kinetic art and computer-aided design.

Although it only ran for ten issues, Form is an important component in the history of British graphic design: it is remarkable that it should have emerged at a time when Britain had been invaded by Pop Art and the Psychedelic style. But for the young Steadman, steeped in Modernist thinking, to design the magazine in the Swiss style was entirely natural. As an architecture student in the 1960s, Modernism was what he was taught – ‘it was just the received wisdom,’ he notes.

Form’s kinship with Neu Grafik and the Ulm bulletins are plain to see. ‘If you know Ulm you’ll see that Form is pretty closely modelled on it,’ says Professor Steadman. ‘It used Helvetica and white space. But I had my own ideas; I wanted the magazine to be square for example. Our plan was to keep publishing it until we made a perfect cube when all the issues were stacked one on top of another.’

Steadman acquired a love of printing and typography while at school, and apart from a spell working on the short-lived magazine Image, and a stint on the Sunday Times Colour Magazine in its 1960s pomp, he has not worked as a graphic designer.

In a long interview published in U:D/R 02, Professor Steadman discuses his early discovery of graphic design and his time as editor, publisher and designer of Form.

U:D/R 02 – Space and structure. Looking at Form, a quarterly magazine of the arts (1966—1969) is only available from this website and at a few selected shops.

Each paper costs £7.50 including postage. Buy it here.

by David Jones

The founders of Unit Editions will be talking about their experiences of running a publishing company at a time when the book is under threat from electronic media. Who would start a publishing company in this climate? Brook and Shaughnessy explain why they think it’s a good idea and why the future of publishing is hybrid.

They will also be revealing the next two Unit publications.

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D&AD North and
 Stockport College Design Department present:

Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy of Unit Editions

4 May 
2010, 6.30pm

The Print Works

The Odeon – Screen 18

27 Withy Grove

Manchester M4 2BS

Find out more

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Process Journal – a new Australian publication. Issue 1 features interviews with Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook.

Max Huber

The books are small (135×190mm) and weigh in at 64 pages. They use high-grade paper and, as is usual with Japanese printing, the reproductions are superb. Each book comes with a coloured bellyband, a bookmark, and a short essay in Japanese and English. The series has an air of refinement and fastidiousness.

Ikko Tanaka

Shiego Okamoto

ggg stands for Ginza Graphic Gallery. The gallery opened in 1986 and specializes in, wait for it – graphic design. It describes itself as a ‘social contribution by Dai Nippon Printing Co Ltd.’

The most intriguing aspect of this series is the shrewd-eyed choice of subjects deserving of the ggg imprimatur. The list begs the question – how are the subjects chosen?

The full list makes fascinating reading: there’s only one Brit – Neville Brody; a handful of Europeans including Josef Muller-Brockmann, Bruno Munari, Studio Dumbar, Bruno Monguzzi, M/M (Paris) and Pierre Bernard; and a number of eminent Americans including Saul Bass, Seymour Chwast, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Herb Lubalin, Lou Dorfsman, Paula Scher and Stefan Sagmeister.

Yusaku Kamekura

Yusaku Kamekura

Max Huber

Unsurprisingly, the majority of subjects are Japanese. Many of the names will be familiar to admirers of Japanese design and illustration: Yusaku Kamekura, Tadanori Yokoo, Keichi Tanaami, Hedeki Nakajima, Takashi Kono, Makoto Sato, Ikko Tanaka and Kenya Hara. But there are others that are new to me; I was happy to discover Masaaki Hiromura, Noriyuki Tanaka, Kashiwa Sato and Shigeo Okamoto.

In truth, there’s hardly a dud amongst all 92 titles. One or two of the Japanese designers seem a tad too enthralled with the slick, over-Photoshopped sheen of luxury goods’ advertising. But these infrequent aberrations are compensated for by astonishing array of talent that makes me hope the series continues for another 90+ editions.

Masaaki Hiromura

Shigeo Okamoto

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Here’s a full list of all 92 titles:

01. Henryk Tomaszewski
02. Paul Rand
03. Yusaku Kamekura
04. Yoshio Hayakawa
05. Ikko Tanaka
06. Kazumasa Nagai
07. Shin Matsunaga
08. Shigeo Fukuda
09. Mitsuo Katsui
10. Saul Bass
11. Kiyoshi Awazu
12. Ivan Chermayeff
13. Koichi Sato
14. Holger Matthies
15. Masayoshi Nakajo
16. Yukimasa Okumura
17. Bruno Munari
18. Katsumi Asaba
19. Makoto Nakamura
20. Milton Glaser
21. Makoto Saito
22. Masuteru Aoba
23. Josef Muller-Brockmann
24. Lou Dorfsman
25. K2
26. Akira Uno
27. Makoto Wada
28. Tadanori Yokoo
29. Tadashi Ohashi
30. Ryuichi Yamashiro
31. Seymour Chwast
32. Alan Chan
33. Seiju Toda
34. Stasys Eidrigevicius
35. Koru Kasai
36. U.G. Sato
37. Studio Dumbar
38. Yoichiro Kawaguchi
39. Gunter Rambow
40. Herbert Leupin
41. Toshifumi Kawahara
42. Tsunehisa Kimura
43. Takuya Onuki
44. Katsuhiko Hibino
45. Keizo Matsui
46. Paul Davis
47. Ryohei Kojima
48. Bruno Monguzzi
49. Sigeo Okamoto
50. Kijyuro Yahagi
51. Pierre Bernard
52. Yasuhiko Kida
53. Italo Lupi
54. Tadahito Nadamoto
55. Uwe Loesch
56. Kamijyo Takahisa
57. Paula Scher
58. Kenya Hara
59. Herb Lubalin
60. Draft
61. Takayuki Soeda
62. Per Arnoldi
63. Takashi Kono
64. Inoue Jyunya
65. Taku Satoh
66. Pierre Mendell
67. Kashiwa Sato
68. Eiko Ishioka
69. Katsunori Aoki
70. Stefan Sagmeister
71. Masahiko Sato
72. Noriyuki Tanaka
73. Nagi Noda
74. Cyan
75. Kazufumi Nagai
76. Keiichi Tanaami
77. Alexander Gelman
78. Hideki Nakajima
79. Katsu Kimura
80. Niklaus Troxler
81. Masaaki Hiromura
82. Kenjiro Sano
83. Shinja Nakajima
84. John Maeda
85. Hiroshi Sasaki
86. Keiko Hirano
87. M/M (Paris)
88. Neville Brody
89. Max Huber
90. Gan Hosoya
91. Toshio Yamagata
92. Issay Kitagawa