British Modern design

I have some posts coming up on the subject of modernist and mid-century graphic designers, inspired by a couple of books I was drooling over last week, and a talk that I went to on Tuesday. Both of these things encouraged me to dig out my copy of British Modern: Graphic Design Between The Wars, so I could immerse myself into the visual style of the time. It's a great book, filled with a high image-to-words ratio, which is just what you want from a book on design.

Although it has a high image-to-words ratio, it's also an interesting read, which I'd forgotten, as it's been some years since I looked at the words as well as the pictures. Through it, I was intrigued to discover that there was one man who could claim much of the credit for the renaissance of British poster design which occurred in the mid-war period. That man was the "far-sighted" Frank Pick, who was publicity director for London Underground and the London Passenger Transport Board between 1908-1940. It was his "enlightened patronage" that created work for many of the designers who went on to become household names and win international awards by the mid-1920s (some of these designers will be the subject of future posts).

There's a whole section in the book entirely dedicated to London Underground graphics. The introduction to the section has this to say (my emphasis):

"Modern English graphic design began underground and surged upward. Posters for the London Underground [...] evolved under the direction of Frank Pick from prosaic landscapes to stylised abstractions. Pick had a vision of a better urban environment and was determined to use his position as director of publicity to educate and raise the public's standard of taste. [...] The Underground was, moreover, a pioneer of integrated design strategies. In addition to posters, Pick commissioned Edward Johnston to design a block-letter alphabet exclusively used for station signs and notices that exerted an influence on all modern English type design."

Fittingly, there's another section dedicated to typography. It describes the Johnston typeface, created in 1916 — and visually about ten years ahead of its time — as "inextricably English," along with the typeface Eric Gill created in 1928.¹

There's actually a whole series of Art Deco books compiled by the same people, including Deco España, Dutch Moderne and French Modern, Italian Art Deco. I'd really like to get my grubby hands on all of them! In the meantime, I'll content myself with browsing through Maraid's collection of Japanese matchbooks. There are some really lovely Japanese Modern designs there:

¹A couple of months ago, I was having dinner with a couple of typeface designers, and was amused when they started arguing over the merits of Johnston vs. Gill Sans, with one of them ranting about how much Eric Gill had ripped off the Johnston typeface when he designed Gill Sans. I have noticed that the latter is one of those ubiquitous typefaces in use today which tends to divide opinion, the same way that Helvetica does, at least amongst people who design for a living. Most people don't care enough to notice the miniscule differences.