An exhibition curated by Rick Poynor

Rick Poynor

Rick Poynor is a British writer on design, graphic design, typography and visual culture. He began as a general visual arts journalist, working on Blueprint magazine in London. After founding Eye magazine , which he edited from 1990 to 1997, he focused increasingly on visual communication...

 at the Barbican Art Gallery (2004) charting over 40 years of graphic design

Graphic design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

 in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

.

The first major attempt to reflect on how the smaller independent studios and agencies marked and shaped the way we look at images in our everyday lives: from book and magazines, music covers and promotions, web design, corporate identities, politics and society and self-initiated projects.

The exhibition assembled some of the most iconic pieces produced since the early sixties. From the covers for Penguin Books

Penguin Books

Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...

 by Derek Birdsall

Derek Birdsall

-Early life:Birdsall was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1934 and attended The King's School, Pontefract, Wakefield College of Art and Central School of Arts and Crafts in London...

 and Romek Marber

Romek Marber

Romek Marber was a Polish freelance designer noted for his work with Penguin Books.Marber arrived in Britain in 1946; in 1961, impressed by Marber’s covers for The Economist, Germano Facetti commissioned Marber to design covers for Simeon Potter's Our Language and Language in the Modern World...

, the magazines The Face by Neville Brody

Neville Brody

Neville Brody is an English graphic designer, typographer and art director.Neville Brody is an alumnus of the London College of Printing and Hornsey College of Art, and is known for his work on The Face magazine and Arena magazine , as well as for designing record covers for artists such as...

 and i-D

I-D

i-D is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture. i-D was founded by designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. The first issue was published in the form of a hand-stapled fanzine with text produced on a typewriter...

by Terry Jones

Terry Jones

Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....

, the memorable Never Mind the Bollocks – Here‘s the Sex Pistols, the Channel4 and BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

2 TV idents by Martin Lambie-Nairn

Martin Lambie-Nairn

Martin Lambie-Nairn is one of the most influential British graphic designers. He was the founder of his eponymous branding agency, Lambie-Nairn & Company, and is currently the creative director of branding agency Heavenly Group Ltd. His work mainly concentrates on brand identity for television...

, the graphic work for Pirelli

Pirelli

Pirelli & C. SpA is a diverse multinational company based in Milan, Italy. The company, the world’s fifth largest tyre manufacturer, is present in over 160 countries, has 20 manufacturing sites around the world and a network of around 10,000 distributors and retailers.Founded in Milan in 1872,...

 by Fletcher/Forbes/Gill.

Other designer and studios included: Malcolm Garrett

Malcolm Garrett

Malcolm Garrett is a British graphic designer, who has worked for music artists such as Simple Minds, Magazine, Duran Duran and Peter Gabriel...

, Peter Saville, Vaughan Oliver

Vaughan Oliver

Vaughan Oliver is a British graphic designer based in Epsom, South of London. Oliver is most noted for his work with graphic design studios 23 Envelope and v23...

, Mark Farrow

Mark Farrow

Mark Farrow was named Designer of the Year in the Creative Review Peer Poll in 2004, voting him ‘the most important graphic designer working today’. His career began in the early 1980s designing experimental sleeves and posters for Factory Records, and The Haçienda, which placed him at the...

, Tomato, Intro, 8vo, Richard Hollis

Richard Hollis

Richard Hollis is one of the most influential figures in British graphic design. Hollis has worked as a printer, a magazine editor, a print-production manager, a book writer, a teacher and a graphic designer....

, Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer (graphic designer)

Herbert Spencer was a British designer, editor, writer, photographer and teacher, born in London on June 22, 1924, and died March 11, 2002 ....

, Ken Garland

Ken Garland

Ken Garland is notable as a British graphic designer, author and game designer. Garland established Ken Garland Associates in 1962.Garland studied design at London's Central School of Arts and Crafts in the early 1950s...

, Margaret Calvert

Margaret Calvert

Margaret Calvert is a typographer and graphic designer who, with colleague Jock Kinneir, designed many of the road signs used throughout Great Britain, as well as the Transport font used on road signs and the Rail Alphabet font used on the British railway system and an early version of the signs...

, Jonathan Barnbrook

Jonathan Barnbrook

Jonathan Barnbrook , is a British graphic designer and typographer. He trained at Central St Martin's and at the Royal College of Art .- Work :...

, Why Not Associates, Graphic Thought Facility

Graphic Thought Facility

Graphic Thought Facility is a London-based graphic design agency.The studio was founded in 1990 by Royal College of Art graduates Paul Neale, Nigel Robinson and Andy Stevens...

, Jannuzzi Smith

Jannuzzi Smith

Jannuzzi Smith is a design studio founded in 1993 by Michele Jannuzzi and Richard Smith in London. They now have offices in London and Lugano, Switzerland....

, Fuel, Kerr/Noble, Alan Kitching, The Designers Republic, Hi-Res, Paul Elliman, Nick Bell, Phil Baines and many others.

Exhibition venues

• Museum für Gestaltung, Switzerland 18 Mar - 7 May 06
• Guangzhou Museum of Art, China 29 Apr - 15 May 05
• Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre, China 2 -19 June 05
• Chongqing Three Gorges Museum, China 29 Jul - 14 Aug 05
• Millennium Monument- Beijing, China 16 Sept - 9 Oct 05
• Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK 16 Sept 04 - 23 Jan 05

Sources

• Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties, Laurence King Publishing, 2004 (ISBN 978-1-85669-422-3)
• http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=3729 (Barbican Art Gallery)
• http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?id=3729&pg=108 (Barbican Art Gallery)
• http://design.weblogsinc.com/2004/09/21/barbican-exhibit-celebrates-40-years-of-independent-british/ (DesignWebLog)
• http://www.museum-gestaltung.ch/Htmls/Ausstellungen/Archiv/2006/communicate/communicate_d.html (Museum für Gestaltung)
• http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-add-design-graphic-design-communicate.htm (British Council)
• http://www.eyemagazine.com/review.php?id=117&rid=555 (Eye Magazine, Issue 55)
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/aug/28/art (The Guardian)