THE PRESENT
Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Bob Gill
Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Bob Gill: THE PRESENT. London: Fletcher, Forbes, Gill, Ltd., Christmas 1963. First edition [limited to 200 hand-numbered copies]. Square quarto. Plain stapled wrappers. Printed dust jacket. 32 pp. Text and color illustrations. Hand-numbered ’114 of a limited edition of 200 copies. INSCRIBED by Bob Gill: “for Helen & Gene — love– Bob” on limitation page. Three tiny, random dots to front panel of jacket, otherwise a fine copy. Rare.
7.75 x 7.75 stapled booklet in jacket with 32 pages of text and artwork beautifully realized by Planet Display, Ltd. A wonderful Association Copy inscribed from Bob Gill to the Federicos.
Gene and Helen Federico: ". . . [Their] outstanding characteristic is that these two graphic artists operate successfully and maintain their artistic integrity in a world which is by and large unsympathetic to artists in general and to the problems involved in their work . . .
". . . It is perhaps not amiss in these troubled and troublesome times to note the sociological as well as the cultural contributions of sincere, gifted young artists like the Federicos. They not only seek and affirm a higher standard in the all-important communicative arts but they are in their roles of artists with integrity, are to be numbered among that small but potent minority who strive in an age of increasing "conformism" and mass-produced mediocrity to live and create as individuals, who seek inspiration rather than security in tradition, and who in their work testify to their belief in the creative vitality of the human being." -- Paul Rand: "Gene And Helen Federico" in GRAPHIS 43 [Zurich: Graphis Press 1952. Volume 8, No. 43, 1952, pg. 394].
Bob Gill (born 1931, Brooklyn, NY) attended Philadelphia Museum School of Art and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art before starting a freelance career in New York. His early work included illustrations for Esquire, Architectural Forum, Fortune, Seventeen, The Nation, children’s books and film titles. He won a New York Art Directors Gold Medal for a CBS television title in 1955.
In 1960 he moved to London to work for Charles Hobson, a London advertising agency and formed Fletcher / Forbes / Gill (a forerunner of Pentagram). The trio’s Graphic design: Visual Comparisons, (1963), sold more than 100,000 copies. Gill resigned from the partnership in 1967 and resumed freelance life, which included teaching, writing children’s books and film-making.
“The 1960s were a time when there was a lot of hunger for names and so forth and so everybody seemed to get their share of publicity. You really had to hide not to become known. And of course Britain was recovering from the Festival of Britain, which was an awful period – just about the dopiest, most provincial stuff. And suddenly the 1960s hit – somewhat due to an American invasion. There was Brownjohn, and I came over and Bob Brookes, an art director who became a photographer. There were lots of American photographers – maybe half a dozen. Also because of the McCarthy era in America, a lot of film directors and producers were driven out of America following the blacklist. It was an amazing period for film. Look Back in Anger opened the 1960s – Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – all these working-class films which were unheard of before.
“It was like shooting fish in a barrel. We had a great combination of the American interest in an idea with impeccable Swiss layout and typography. Not that I was helpless in that area or that they [Fletcher and Forbes] didn’t have great ideas, but there was no one in London who had these two strengths in combination. It was all over in about five minutes.” — Bob Gill, Eye Magazine interview by Patrick Baglee, Autumn 1999
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.