Pentagram The Pinnacle of English Design
Introduction England is a Nation that is known for a lot of innovative thinking. From rock n’ roll bands to architectural revelations, England has always been on the cutting edge. That is why Pentagram is such a perfect representation of the personality of this great nation. The collaboration of Pentagram is something that is incredibly unique in the design industry and in international business in general. Pentagram combines amazing technical skill in various classical and modern art mediums with their vast knowledge of advertising and architecture to come up with some of the best and most noticeable identities in world. In this book, you will learn about the fathers of this great partnership, where they came from, and how they came together.
Table of Contents Alan Fletcher ................2 Colin Forbes.................4 Mervyn Kurlansky.........6 Kenneth Grange ...........8 Theo Crosby.................10
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As he attended school, Fletcher became increasingly interested in city lifestyle. After attending Hammersmith School of Art, Alan opted for the livelier evironment of the Central School. This is where he met co-founders of Pentagram Colin Forbes and Theo Crosby. After graduating, he taught English in Barcelona before receiving a job at the prestigious Royal Collge of Art. He stayed there for three years before entering an exchange program with Yale University where he learned from Josef Albers, who was a great influence on his work.
After graduating from Yale, Fletcher made a trip to Milan. Here, he took a job working for Pirelli, an Italian tire company. This is where he began to shape his identity as a designer. After a brief stint with the company, Alan returned to England where he started a design studio with his friend Colin Forbes in 1959. Over the next 15 years, Fletcher and Forbes developed their reputations as designers. Fletcher’s relationship with Forbes and Bob Gill is what laid the foundation for Pentagram.
The trio wanted to broaden their opportunities for work, so they added Theo Crosby to the mix. However, Gill was very unhappy with the amount of time architecture took to design and build, so he left the company in 1965. Eventually, the company added Kenneth Grange and Mervyn Kurlansky and decided to call the company Pentagram. Fletcher helped develop the company over the next twenty years until he left the studio in 1992 to form his own design studio in London.
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Colin Forbes was born on March 6, 1928 in London. He went on to study at the School of Arts and Crafts and work as an assistant for Herbert Spencer. He described his experience at art school like this: “I could draw better than anyone else in the senior class in middle school”, but when he got to art school, “suddenly [he] was surrounded by people who all drew better than anyone in the senior class. And better than [he] did.” The environment of the Central School allowed Forbes a chance to slack off, which he did. That is, until he was forced to read a dozen books assigned him by a wood engraving teacher named John Farleigh. He credits Farleigh with guiding him to the successful career he has had.
In 1960, after leaving a position as Head of Graphic Design at the age of 28, and as a design consultant to Pirelli in England, Forbes began his own practice. He visited the United States and met a number of designers that he admired, including Will Bustin, Gene Federico and Paul Rand. In 1962, forbes returned to London and began the design firm Fletcher Forbes Gill, which turned out to be the basis for Pentagram.
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Mervyn Kurlansky was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1936. Like Forbes and Fletcher, he studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. After finishing school, he then spent three years in freelance practice followed by five years as graphics director at Planning Unit. In 1969, he joined Crosby Fletcher Forbes and helped found Pentagram in 1972. Kurlansky has worked with some very high-profile clients, such as Barclays Bank, Boosey and Hawkes, IBM, Loreal, Polaroid, Reuters, Penguin Books and Toyota, among others. He has won a number of notable awards including a bronze medal from the Brno Biennale of Graphic Design, a gold award from the Package Designers Council, silver awards from the Designers and Art Directors Association, a silver award from the New York Art Directors Club, a gold award from Japan’s Minister of Trade and Industry, and was inducted into the South African Design Hall of Fame in 2006.
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Kurlansky has his work permanently hung in the Museum of Modern Art, New York and has been featured in several publications and exhibitions in Austria, China, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Israel, Japan, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, UK, and USA. He was the co-author of four books about Pentagram: Pentagram, Living by Design, Ideas on Design and The Compendium. He is also very active as an educator. He lectures frequently and serves on design juries for various organizations worldwide. He is co-founder of multiple organizations dedicated to cultivating creativity and innovation in design.
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Kenneth Grange was born in London in 1929 and attended the Wllesden School of Arts and Crafts from 1944 to 1947. He served in the Royal Engineers while at the same time training in technical drawing. After leaving the armed forces, Grange freelanced for London architecture and design practices. In 1958, he founded Kenneth Grange Design, Ltd. While he his known for designing pretty much anything, he found his niche in product design. He has designed products for Kodak, Kenwood, and the City of London, among others. Grange designed the line of “Chef” food mixers for Kenwood. For Kodak, he designed the housing for the “Pocket Instamatic” camera in 1975 and in 1979, the “Parker 25” fountain pen for Parker.
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Grange has recieved numerous honors for his designs and services to the design industry. Some of which include: Duke of Edinburgh Elegant Design Prize in 1963, ten Design Council Awards from 1963, Chartered Society of Designers Minerva Gold Medal in 1966, Royal Designer for Industry in 1969, solo show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1983. He also has five Honorary Doctorates: RCA, Heriot Watt, De Montfort, Staffs, Open University. Additionally, he was President of Cartered Society Designers in 1987, had a solo show in Tokyo in 1989, was a board member at Globe Theatre in 1998 and won the Prince Philip Designers Prize in 2003.
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Theo Crosby lived from 1925 to 1994. In his early years, he was a part of the Allied invasion of Italy as a part of the English military. After the war, he moved to South Africa for a short time until moving back to England upon the South African governments sactioning of the apartheid. He settled back in England in 1948, and began work at the modernist architecural practice of Fry Drew and Partners in London while also studying at the Central School where he met Pentagram co-founders Alan Flethcer and Colin Forbes.
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In the late 1950s, while developing his own architectural practice, Crosby worked as Technical Editor of Architectural Design magazine. During this time, Crosby added to his reputation as an architect through a number of exhibitions. Since he was working on designing magazine layouts while at the same time doing architectural work, he could very easily see the benefit of cross-disciplinary work in the arts. In 1964, he designed a pavilion at the Milan Triennale, which is how he came in contact with Fletcher Forbes and Gill, who designed the graphics for the pavilion.
In 1965, upon Bob Gill’s departure from the partnership known as Fletcher Forbes Gill, the name was changed to Crosby Fletcher Forbes. Reportedly, Gill’s reason for leaving was that he did not like how long architectural designs took, so he decided to part ways. The decision to have an architect as a part of their partnership soon paid off for Crosby Fletcher Forbes when Reuters asked Crosby to redesign their boardroom and was then convinced to work with Fletcher on a new identity and logo.
Crosby’s most well known architectural work is undoubtedly Shakespeare’s Globe in Thames. The design for this building was somewhat revolutionary was that the whole building is basically a hollow circle. He insisted upon only using natural materials such as oak and thatch after devoting 17 years of research to the Globe. Other notable works include Chalcot House in Wiltshire, Ulster Terrace in London, Unilever House in London, NNB Bank in Amsterdam, the Battle of Britain Monument, and the Barbican Centre in London.
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