alan fletcher
DESCRIPTION
A magazine dedicated to the life of Alan Fletcher and his work. This is my first magazine layout so hope you like it, any feedback on how to make it better will be appreciated. This is a work in progress.TRANSCRIPT
> V&A museum logo> Pirreli ad campaign> Co-founder of Fletcher/Forbes/Gill design firm
His legacyHis life
In a nutshell p.14
Alan fletchers quotes p.6
The art of lookingsideways p.11
4 schools of design P. 9
12
‘
Less is more P. 4
Portfolio P.12
Less
is more
4
You might not know his
name, but chances are you’ve
seen his work. Alan Fletcher was one
of the most celebrated and prolific
British designers of the Twentieth
Century.
Fletcher was one of the most
influential figures in post World War
2 British graphic design. His fusion
of the cerebral European tradition
with North America’s emerging pop
culture and the formulation of his
distinct approach made him a pioneer
“A founding member of Pentagram, Fletcher helped to develop a model of combining commercial partner-ships with creative independence...”
5
of Reuters and the Victoria & Albert
Museum.
Born in Kenya in 1931,
Fletcher moved to England at the age
of five after his father became termi-
nally ill. He was raised by his mother
and grandparents in west London
develop a model of combining com-
mercial partnerships with creative
of independent graphic design.
A founding member of Pen-
tagram, Fletcher helped to indepen-
dence. Fletcher also developed some
of the most memorable graphic de-
sign of the era, notably the identities
Like most children of the era
Fletcher attended Christ’s Hospital, a
boarding school in Horsham, where
like his fellow classmates he was
destined for a career in the army, the
church or banking. But at the point
where Fletcher had to make a choice
about his career path, he chose a dif-
ferent route, opting out of the rigid
groove of post-war British middle
class life and took up a place at Ham-
mersmith School of Art
6
Alan
“I find going to bed and pulling my imagination over my head often means waking up
with a solution to a design problem. That state of limbo, the time between
sleeping and waking, seems to allow ideas to somehow outflank the
sentinels of common sense. That’s when they can float to the sur-
face. I find ideas often show up in the shower, or while I’m
contemplating marmalade and toast and breakfast.”
“I’d sooner do the same on Monday or Wednesday
as I do on a Saturday or Sunday. I don’t divide
my life between labour and pleasure.”
“If your mind is too open people can throw
all kinds of rubbish into it.”
“A person without imagination is like a tea-
bag without hot water.”
“Thinking is drawing in your head.”
QuotesFletcher’s
Alan Fletcher
7
8
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9
During the 1950s he attended four different art schools, each one more
forward looking and cosmopolitan than the last. Leaving Hammer-
smith for the livelier environment of
the Central School, he found himself
in class with his future partners Colin
Forbes and Theo Crosby as well as
such other future luminaries as Der-
ek Birdsall and Ken Garland. After
graduating from the Central School,
he spent a year teaching English in
Barcelona and then won a place at
the Royal College of Art, where his
contemporaries included the artists
Peter Blake and Joe Tilson.
“He found himself in class with his future partners Colin Forbes and Theo Crosby...”
4 schools
ofdesign
10
Towards the end of Fletcher’s
three-year stint at the RCA,
the head of design Richard Guyatt
exchanged places with Alvin Eisen-
man, his oppo-
site number at
Yale University.
Fletcher sug-
gested to Guyatt
that, if professors
were able to swap
places, students
should have the
same privilege.
The result was
a travel scholar-
ship awarded
to Fletcher on
graduation on
the condition
that he attend
classes at Yale. He was taught at Yale
by the eminent US graphic designer,
Paul Rand, and the artist Josef Albers.
Fletcher also arranged visits to promi-
nent graphic designers such as Robert
Brownjohn, Ivan Chermayeff and
Tom Geismar in New York. He even
won a commission to design a cover
for Leo Lionni,
art director of
Fortune maga-
zine, then a
showcase for
modern design
and a client at
the top of every
aspiring graphic
designer’s wish-
list. After grad-
uating from
Yale, Fletcher
set off for Latin
America but
stopped off in
Los Angeles,
hoping to earn money to finance the
trip. He phoned the designer Saul
Bass from the bus station and worked
as his assistant for a few weeks
11
Designed to be opened at
random, The Art of Looking
Sideways, Alan Fletcher’s 2001 book,
is an unfailing source of wit, elegance
and inspiration. At over a thousand
pages, it is a spectacular treatise on
visual thinking, one that illustrates
the designer’s sense of play and his
broad frame of reference.
While designers and design
students rifle through its pages for
ideas, others enjoy its gently provoca-
tive mind-teasers. Assembling the
most ambitious of settings for his
work, against a background encom-
passing art, design and literature
from pre-history to the present day,
Fletcher constructs a convincing
argument for graphic design’s role in
the course of civilization.
The British art director
Graham Fink had once remarked that
the creative mind should be like a
sponge and absorb everything around
it. And then squeeze the mind for the
juices to flow in making the work
happen. Alan Fletcher’s book ‘The Art
of Looking Sideways’ is the perfect
example of such a sponge of a mind
“ The ArtOfLookingSideways “
folioPort
12
13
Inanutshell
14
Reuters, IoD & V&A logos. 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, Pen-
guin 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 in-
cluding Lloyd’s of London and Daim-
ler 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 left Pentagram in 1992,
and worked from the home in Not-
ting Hill that he had occupied since
15
the early 1960s, where he was assisted
by his daughter Raffaella Fletcher,
Leah Klein and Sarah Copplestone,
and worked for new clients, such
as Novartis. Much of his later work
was as art director for the publisher
Phaidon Press, which he joined in
1993. For him, life and work were
inseparable: “Design is not a thing
you do. It’s a way of life.” (quoted in
his obituary in The Times). He would
continue working, even on holiday,
drawing on a notepad with a pencil.
The Art of Looking Sideways
(2001), which had taken him 18 years
to finish. An exhibition of his life’s
work was displayed at the Design
Museum in London between 11 No-
vember 2006 until 18 February 2007,
alongside the posthumous publica-
tion of a book, Picturing and Poeting.
The exhibition went on tour in 2008.
It was installed at the Ginza Graphic
Gallery in Tokyo between the 9th and
31st of May 2008, and was installed
at the Pitzhanger Manor Gallery in
Ealing, West London, between 14
November 2008 and 3 January 2009.[
He died of cancer in London, and is
survived by his wife and daughter.
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