> 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

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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

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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

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Inanutshell

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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

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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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