A BOOK OF MATCHES
Crosby / Fletcher / Forbes
Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes [Theo Crosby, Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes]: A BOOK OF MATCHES. London: Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes, [n. d., c. 1967]. Original edition. Slim quarto. Plain stapled wrappers. Printed dust jacket. 16 pp. Black and white illustrations. Wrappers lightly worn along top edge. A very good or better copy. Rare.
8.25 x 11.75 stapled self-promotional booklet in jacket with a 16 page lesson in visual literacy from Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes. Off-print gathered from publication in TYPOGRAPHICA 14 [New Series]. London: Lund Humphries, December 1966, Herbert Spencer [Editor].
England was ablaze with creative activity in the early Sixties. Before our very eyes and ears The Beatles were transmogrified from a funky Liverpool group into an international musical life force. The satiric revue "Beyond the Fringe" launched Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook as comics and social critics. Mary Quant was influencing the way women designed themselves. And you'd better believe that Graphic design was part of the cultural explosion, and Fletcher, Forbes and Gill were at the forefront.
In the early Sixties, Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes formalized their working relationship with American graphic designer Bob Gill, and Fletcher/Forbes/Gill was born. They pooled their clients, rented a studio in a mews house off Baker Street and became the most fashionable designers in town -- their avant-garde fusion of type and image was unprecedented in the rather stuffy confines of British graphic design. Praised within London's fledgling design community, Fletcher, Forbes and Gill were among the first graphic designers to make their mark outside it -- notably being featured in Vogue magazine -- and admiring clients clamoured for their services.
In 1965 Fletcher/Forbes/Gill became Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes, when Bob Gill left and the architect Theo Crosby arrived. The impetus for Crosby's arrival was a design project for Shell, which Fletcher and Forbes hoped to extend from corporate identity into the structure of garage forecourt. The Shell project, as well as the 1965 Triennale in Milan led the architect and the three graphic designers to join forces. "Whoever needed a letterhead or a brochure," Forbes said, "probably had an office, shop or showroom. Whoever wanted new offices probably needed mailing pieces."
Like an ever-expanding amoeba Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes added Mervyn Kurlansky and Kenneth Grange to the masthead and eventually rechristened themselves 'Pentagram.' You might have heard of them.