Ken Garland and me

Ken Garland [Peter Smith] 

on: art and design training/breadth of learning/the early graphic designers/influences/the newness of graphic design

It was slightly haphazard. I decided I wanted to be a commercial artist when I was still at grammar school. I left school at 16 and went to a night school in Bristol called the West of England Academy of Art. They didn’t have a course in graphic design, in fact the term wasn’t known. They did offer commercial design, which was a rather low-brow activity. It involved ‘trade drawing’ among other things – doing representative drawings of industrial equipment and so forth. I felt very quickly that it lacked some of what I was looking for, life drawing for example, and I made a great fuss. As a result I spent two years doing a rather hybrid course and went quite eagerly into the army to do my conscription. When I got out I came to London.

I already had an idea that I wanted to do something to do with industry and business that would use my skills to un-muddle. I started at the John Cass College of Art, but after a short while I realised it wasn’t providing me with enough in the way of graphic design. At the instigation of one of my teachers there, whom I think of very fondly to this day, I went to the Central. They accepted me there without fees all year, until I managed officially to get myself away from John Cass. I spent the next two years at the Central School. 

Then I really did get a grasp of graphic design. There was daytime teaching given by Jesse Collins, Herbert Spencer and George Mayhew. Keith Vaughan and Paul Hogarth taught illustration. I was also able to take evening classes in experimental typography with Edward Wright and experimental photography with Nigel Henderson. This was enormously important to me.

In the UK before the war, there were four designers who were shining and brilliant and led the way for us. Henrion, Abram Games, Hans Schleger and Tom Eckersley. I don’t think we were pioneering, but we were constructing the notion of a graphic design business. People insist on calling it a profession but I never do, I call it a craft or a business, a trade. Certainly we saw it as something we could forge.

[on: choosing graphic design/first impressions of Ken Garland 

At school I had a good friend whose uncle worked as a commercial artist. I was good at art at school and so I asked him for advice. He suggested that I went to art college to do a foundation course and whilst there I was introduced to graphic design. Although I didn’t really understand the range of the subject, I decided this was the path for me.

When I was studying at Bolton we went to the Icograda seminars in London. Ken was one of the speakers. He gave a very theatrical performance including how to answer the telephone to different types of clients by taking on various personas and wearing different costumes each time! He also demonstrated how to get the best out of your design solutions by adapting and modifying concepts to suit different clients. It was very funny, controversial and thought-provoking. So, my first impression of Ken was that ‘this guy is crazy, fascinating, challenging and extraordinary’.

A few years later I started at the Royal College of Art and one Tuesday morning this guy turned up wearing a woolly hat and bicycle clips and said ‘hi I’m Ken Garland, I will be teaching on the course one day a week’. I was delighted. By then I’d read some of his articles, seen the First Things First manifesto and was familiar with his design work for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Galt Toys and Design magazine.]

on: post-war optimism/opportunity/international influences

The atmosphere was enormously enthusiastic at the Central. Enormously. We had a feeling that we were a generation of some significance. Most of the students whom I was with had not been in the war, but there was something to be done, there was a world to be made. It was definitely there, a feeling of building a new society.

Graphic design was not something that people thought, ‘ahhh we must have some of that’. We had a world to make there too, but that in itself was exciting. We had to make a case for what we were doing. We enjoyed the Festival of Britain but as graphic designers we were critical because it was imbued with a notion of Britishness that we rejected totally. We were drawn to the international… the United States, Switzerland and Germany, we were impatient about this narrow-minded Britishness.

on: early working life/learning on the job/not following trends

Jesse Collins, our head of department, came to me and said, ‘Garland, you’re going to be an art editor’ and I said, ‘what is an art editor’. He’d found me a job on Furnishings magazine. I had a feeling it might be my kind of thing, and my god, it was. Initially three months of awful agony, but I loved it. I spent three years in that job and then I got another job as art editor on Design magazine, which I loved even more. I was there for six years.

I had the huge pleasure and honour of being one designer among a group of people who had other skills. They were printers, photographers and I was in the middle of them trying to organise the appearance of the magazine. It was amazing. It was a revelation, it was a totally stunning experience. I’ve enjoyed myself hugely since then but never more. It’s part of the agony of finding oneself, grappling with situations that are totally unfamiliar.

I was immersed in the job but I could sense what was going on elsewhere. I didn’t agree with some of the enthusiasms of my fellow designers who were passionately fond of Swiss graphic design. I did find out about it and I had some respect for it, but this was not some kind of holy grail for me. I went my own way and I didn’t necessarily agree with all the convictions of my fellow designers.

on: design ideology/fashion

We are more prone to claim absolutes in the visual arts than almost everything else. In poetry, literature, politics, people are forever pointing out that our attitudes and our achievements are mediated by time and experience and they don’t have any absolute significance. People in the visual arts are quite often arrogant in this assumption that there are absolutes. I don’t think there are in art or design or architecture.

I don’t think I have any set principles, although in my own work clarity and a lack of obfuscation and unnecessary ornament is essential. I don’t necessarily hold that for other people. Some work is delightfully obfuscated. I can accept it in other people as long as they don’t impose it on me.

I’m barely aware of fashion in relation to design. For example the panels I produced for the exhibition Children of Bangladesh. I used handwriting and was told, ‘that’s terribly fashionable – doing it by hand’. It wasn’t meant to be fashionable, it was just the way I responded to the subject. Of course this is disingenuous in the sense that we are all aware of some kind of fashion and we do respond to it. But less than anybody I know, I’m not influenced by it.

Typography became immensely fashionable in the ‘80s.  Those notions derived from Tschichold and the Swiss – notions of clarity and appropriateness but also of spareness – were overthrown. It was due for stirring up, but it was overthrown largely by rubbish, but rubbish has got its place. It’s the nature of attacking an existing canon. What you produce is really reactive. Ever since the ‘60s men and women have learned to dress the way they feel like dressing. Maybe in typographic design we may learn to do the same thing. 

[on: formative years/grants/early ambitions/Garland’s influence as a teacher

I came from a working class background. Living and studying in the north-west of England during the 1970s meant that I witnessed first hand the crisis-prone state of the country.

Luckily at this time grants were available so I was able to go into higher education. Like many art students I thought I would end up as an illustrator doing music album covers. Music has been a passion for me and I’ve always been interested in the way popular culture reflects or represents a political message. A lot of my political and social ideas came through these influences; as Bob Dylan says ‘the answer is blowin’ in the wind’.

I moved to London in 1976, which was a shock to my system. I got to see people like Elvis Costello and Billy Bragg. The Sex Pistols were also doing their stuff (God Save the Queen and her Fascist Regime). I always felt very privileged studying in London and tried to make the most of it, a bit like the film Educating Rita, or Peter in my case, which is one of my favourites. I lived in Brixton at the time of the riots. The Clash sang London’s Burning and it was. These experiences made me very socially aware and continue to influence my working life. I try to work from a socially responsible point of view. John: 6: 27 do not work for food that goes bad; instead, work for the food that lasts for eternal life.

During my time at the RCA Ken became my most influential tutor. He was a constant source of new challenges and inspiration. He would probe every detail of a project not only from the point of view of content and aesthetics, but also from a social responsibility stand point. Twenty-five years later, corporate social responsibility has become a major topic in design. I think this demonstrates his visionary outlook.]

on: professional competitiveness/making good work possible/the client/compromise/constraints

There are far too many graphic designers so it is a buyer’s market now. In 1962, when I started my practice, there were perhaps six, seven or eight groups already there. We didn’t realise what a privilege it was to be among so few. It was enviable. Now, for god’s sake, there is the matter of pitching for accounts, which I have never ever done. If it ever was hinted at, I shrank from it, I moved away. I cannot imagine how an uncompetitive person like me would tackle the situation now. 

I wanted to have clients I liked. When I set up my practice I already had one client whom I had acquired while I was at Design magazine: Galt Toys. We had the most wonderful 20 years working together. I acquired six more clients very rapidly. By the end of my first year I was already working for a number of clients on retainer.

It seems to me to be absurd to have blasting differences of opinions with clients. They are the people who are paying you, they are the people whom you are commissioned to satisfy, to fulfil. But your client is not just a person who pays you. Your client is also the buyer of the goods and services, the users of the information. In the same way that for a doctor the National Health Service is not the only client. The patients are. I don’t pretend to say that my users are the equivalent of a doctor’s patient, but I do sense them to be as much my client. I do have a certain independence of mind about this.

I didn’t feel any great difficulty from clients preventing me from doing what I wanted to do. I don’t remember any compromises that resulted in work I wasn’t proud of. However, there’s never been a job that when it was done I didn’t think I could have done better. I wouldn’t say I felt guilty about it, because I just realised that we have a certain amount of time, of money and energy. Given a little more time, a little more energy, a little more thought, you could do better. It’s part and parcel of the graphic design business: time and cost constraints, and we shouldn’t grumble about it and I don’t. That’s the nature of the beast.

on: being known as a ‘political’ designer/turning work down/economic recessions/the benefits of remaining small

Most of my work is commercial. I have a political reputation, which to some extent is undeserved, because it didn’t occupy that much of my time. I have been a member of the Labour Party since 1957. I’ve been a member of CND since 1958 and yes, I’ve had some political convictions, it’s true. But I would say as far as my graphic design work is concerned, it’s only occasionally been overtly political.

I turned down work by sort of tactful evasion from IBM, Ilford Films and one or two other quite big clients, mainly because they were big. I didn’t like big clients. I managed to dissuade IBM by pointing out a sentence in my book, in which I talked about my unhappiness with multinationals, so we cancelled our appointment.

There were two recessions whilst I was running my practice and neither of them bothered me at all. I went on with the same clients through both. Big clients were the ones who were dropping. Throughout my whole working life I’ve not felt insecure in this way. It’s just pure luck.

I loved being a small outfit, being one of the designers. There was not one job that went through here that I wasn’t part of. Had I grown I might have become the manager. Instead we all did our own clerical work, letters, phoning, making arrangements, we never had a secretary, we all did it.

[on: professional competitiveness/economics

The competitive nature of the business can help raise standards. I have tried to leave the economic anxieties to the accounts department, spending time and effort on projects as they require. This has not always been embraced when I worked for larger design groups as they try to keep tight financial control on projects. Two years ago I co-founded a new company called Openmind and have had one or two sleepless nights wondering where the next project’s going to come from, but somehow they keep coming.]

on: creative envy/breadth of vision/peer recognition/design accolades

I never felt envious of my peers. The only people I ever felt any envy for were Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Frank Auerbach…

I knew about the work of my friends William Slack and Geoff White, Ivor Kamlish, Colin Forbes, Alan Fletcher. I met the Americans as soon as they arrived, Bob Gill for example. But on the whole they were not my social fellows. My social fellows were political, artistic, all sorts, but they weren’t confined to a sort of graphic design society. Some of my contemporaries ate, slept and drank graphic design. I never did. I never have. It’s not to say you can’t do the most wonderful, stimulating and excellent work, but it’s not enough to found the whole of one’s life on.

I was a founder member of British Design & Art Direction [D&AD] but I only exhibited once. I never sent anything into any annual except maybe in the early ‘60s. I never had that desire to achieve the approval of my peers. It’s a quirk. If I ever could have a novel published I would seek every possible prize that novel could achieve. That says something about where my priorities must lie, I suppose.

Here’s the most splendid accolade I ever received. I’m in somebody’s house and they say ‘your name sounds strangely familiar’. They ask what I’ve done and I mention Galt Toys. They go into a cupboard and pull out an old box of Connect and say ‘I played with this as a child and now my children play with it. It’s been going on 30 years now and we value it so much’. For most of us our graphic work has such a short life, you know, a month, a week, a year. That Bob Chapman and I designed this game which has proved so satisfying to so many generations is absolutely wonderful. 

[on: the breadth of vision/design accolades/peer recognition

I was always aware of Ken’s diverse and broad range of interests. He had an endless ability to talk and give illustrations on a wide range of subjects. His influence is therefore about much more than pure aesthetics. Like him I resist adhering to a particular design ideology. I like to keep my mind open and produce solutions that are appropriate to needs rather than being based on a particular style or trend. I am also particularly gratified when end-users respond well to my work, but it’s also good to be recognised by your peers. I have from time to time entered design competitions but I try not to make a habit of it! I like to be aware of what’s happening by reading the design press and going to as many exhibitions and lectures as I can.]

on: the relationship of graphic design to art

Graphic design contains some very important artistic sensibilities. Having a client doesn’t make a difference – Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I know quite a few painters and sculptors who prescribe briefs for themselves that are every bit as exact as any client has given me.

Of course in graphic design sometimes all you are doing is being an interpreter for someone else’s wishes. That’s not an unworthy thing to be but it’s not the only thing I’ve ever been in graphic design. When I’ve done covers for catalogues I’ve sometimes indulged myself in exactly the same way as anyone with an open brief might do. The client is prepared to accept my indulgence. There are degrees. I’m not keen to find some absolute which divorces graphic design from other forms of art. I think there are always mitigating factors.

on: teaching

I’m fascinated by the openness and design skills of my grandchildren. It reminds me that skill can be very quickly acquired, even when very young, and that we diminish our ability to absorb artistic skills by the horror of secondary school. There it is suggested that subjects are self-contained: that mathematics doesn’t have art in it and so on.

I started teaching in 1958 at the insistence of Jesse Collins. He virtually dragooned me into it, thank god. Within the first couple of weeks I realised how much I enjoyed it. I found that I could talk to people of my own age, which they were, and that all they wanted to do was to be locked in debate about their work. It seemed suddenly not to be such a difficult job. I didn’t know what I’d been so afraid of and that’s the way it’s been ever since.

The teachers that impressed me were incisive. I felt I could rely on them to tell it the way it is. I think I too was able to talk about almost any aspect of graphic design with some knowledge and authority. Students could see that I knew my subject very well.  

[on: teaching

I have tried to emulate the good tutors that taught me, especially Ken.

I tell students that they have to be passionate about the subject and see it not so much as a career but more a way of life. In order to be successful you need to be committed and put a lot of time and effort into learning about all the different aspects of the subject. Graphic designers have a responsibility and can play an important role in society. Anyone starting on a career in graphic design needs to understand that it’s not only about aesthetics. It requires an inquisitive mind in order to produce conceptual ideas that are accessible, appropriate and reflect a deep consideration of the subject and audiences.]

on: being part of graphic design history/being groundbreaking

I’ve been important not so much in the graphic work that I have done, but more in the opinions and attitudes I’ve taken up. I do seem to have influenced people. To some extent this is because of the work, but it’s also from things that I’ve said, articles published, books written, and yes, I think I have made a mark there of some sort.

To be groundbreaking has never seemed important to me. All I wanted to do was satisfy a brief. Sometimes the invention that went into something was quite mysterious, unspoken and I didn’t really care to explain it to people. What is invention and innovation? It’s only rediscovering something that was well-known to cavemen. I don’t rate that groundbreaking business very much. 

on: the personal significance of graphic design

I think that those of us who ought to take it seriously, because we have the ability to express our feelings about it, don’t take it seriously because we have other interests. I don’t think it’s big enough to absorb us. Right from the beginning it seemed to me I didn’t want to be constrained by graphic design as a subject, but to seek reference elsewhere and that’s always been the case.

It’s been good. I always went down to the studio eagerly and left it reluctantly. I always loved doing everything that I wanted to do and the only disappointment I had was that every time I did something it wasn’t as good as I thought it could be. But this drives you on to do the next thing as well as you can. One of the greatest satisfactions in my working life has been the access we have, via our clients, into so many different worlds. I’ve learnt so much. I cannot imagine a more stimulating and satisfying work.

[on: the personal significance of graphic design

After a few years working as a graphic designer I remember getting a Christmas bonus. My father was amazed, it was more than he had received in bonus payments during the whole of his working life. It was a humbling moment and made me realise how lucky I was getting paid well for doing something I really enjoyed. Needless to say I have never illustrated an album cover!]

Our contribution to Drip-dry shirts: the evolution of the graphic designer by Lucienne Roberts