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Typographica

Guest curator: Rick Poynor

Kemistry Gallery, London
11 September to 31 October 2009

Typographica (1949-1967), founded, edited and designed by the renowned British typographer Herbert Spencer, was one of the most extraordinary and distinctive arts publications of the past 60 years. The magazine was unusual for its originality of editorial vision and for its exceptional standards of design and production. Spencer’s boundary-blurring approach anticipated many of the preoccupations of contemporary designers, artists and cultural commentators.

This exhibition at Kemistry Gallery in London was the first to focus on Typographica since the 1960s. It set out to evoke the experience of turning the magazine’s exquisitely constructed pages by presenting key page sequences and, in some cases, entire articles. Three thematic sections explored Spencer’s principal concerns as editor. “The Camera as Pen” examined his use of photography both as subject matter and as a tool for “writing” the magazine. “The Liberated Page” looked at his commitment to experimental typography and page design. “Lettering, Print, Ephemera” focused on examples of traditional printing history and vernacular material shown in Typographica’s pages.







Photographs: Rick Poynor

Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties

Guest curator: Rick Poynor
Barbican Art Gallery curator: Jane Alison
Exhibition design: Azman Associates
Exhibition graphics: Nick Bell

Barbican Art Gallery, London
16 September 2004 to 23 January 2005

Guangzhou Museum of Art, Guangzhou
29 April to 15 May 2005

Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre, Shanghai
2 June to 19 June 2005

Three Gorges Museum, Chongqing
29 July to 14 August 2005

The China Millennium Monument, Beijing
16 September to 9 October 2005

Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich
18 March to 7 May 2006

Communicate, created by Poynor for the Barbican Art Gallery in London, explored the work of British graphic designers who maintain their independence as a key principle. The exhibition, featuring more than 500 items, offered the first panoramic survey of the huge impression made by these communicators on the visual landscape of Britain in the past 50 years.

Communicate was organized in seven sections: Publishing, Arts, Music, Politics and Society, Identity, Self-Initiated Projects, and Web Design. Featured projects, many of them iconic designs, included record sleeves for Led Zeppelin, Sex Pistols, New Order and Primal Scream; book designs for Penguin, Faber and Monty Python; graphic identities for the Biba department store, BBC2, Big Brother and Paul Smith; magazines such as Oz, Nova, Time Out and i-D; protest posters for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Anti-Nazi League; and websites for The Guardian and Donnie Darko.

The exhibition celebrated the achievements of British designers as diverse as Alan Fletcher, John Sewell, Ken Garland, Derek Birdsall, Raymond Hawkey, Richard Hollis, Robert Brownjohn, Margaret Calvert, Michael English, Hipgnosis, Pearce Marchbank, Katy Hepburn, David King, Barney Bubbles, Peter Saville, Neville Brody, The Designers Republic, Tomato, Fuel, Graphic Thought Facility, Lucienne Roberts, Julian House, Daniel Eatock, Åbäke, Scott King, and many others.









Photographs: Barbican Art Gallery