GRAPHIC DESIGN: VISUAL COMPARISONS
Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Bob Gill
Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Bob Gill: GRAPHIC DESIGN: VISUAL COMPARISONS. London: Studio Books, 1963. First edition. Slim quarto. Glossy printed wrappers. 96 pp. Fully illustrated with black and white and spot colored examples. Book design by Fletcher/Forbes/Gill. The first Studio Paperback, edited by John Lewis. A fine, unread copy. Rare in this condition.
6.5 x 7.75 softcover book with 94 black and white and color images from over 50 European & American designers. The work of Fletcher/Forbes/Gill is shown here together with fifty of the best known designers of the 1960s. <p> Designers whose work is represented in this volume include George Lois, R. O. Blechman, Norman Ives, Paul Rand (2 examples), Saul Bass (3 examples), Herb Lubalin, Fletcher/Forbes/Gill, Henry Wolf, Chermayeff and Geismar, William Klein, George Tscherney, Dieter Rot, Wiliam Golden, Josef Muller-Brockman, Tomi Ungerer and many others.
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."