Alan Fletcher: Fifty years of graphic work (and play)

The Guardian described him as 'one of the giants of 20th century design' Alan Fletcher is a key figure in graphic design. Needless to say, I wasn't about to miss this little gem of an exhibit. Fletcher founded design firm Fletcher/Forbes/Gill and then Pentagram a legendary firm that ‘changed the way designers worked. Saville who worked at pentagram formed a close friendship with Fletcher. “He invested the work with an insightfulness, a wit, and those are the qualities that touch us.” I really enjoyed the way much of the work was very simplistic, not overly complicating subjects and simply picking up on an aspect of the subject that can be played upon graphically. Much of the work from the Fletcher/Forbes/Gill years took fairly dry subjects and turned them into iconic memorable work like the Pirelli tire adverts. The company’s 1962 self promotional book was another classic example of a simplistic clever wit whereby a three sectioned image of each man could be mixed and matched with the head torso and legs of the others – a comment on how the three way partnership was worth more than the sum of its parts! The company’s philosophy also appealed to me, “any one visual problem has an infinite number of solutions: that these solutions should derive from the subject matter: that we have no pre-conceived graphic style.” I feel that my work relates to this philosophy as I enjoy taking a new approach each time I am faced with a subject matter, working in a variety of styles of work.