Margaret Calvert |
1936
Calvert was born in South Africa and studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London, England in 1950. During her time there some of her professors included Jock Kinneir, whom she later collaborated with to create the signage for Gatwick Airport. In 1957, she and Kinneir were commissioned to design the new motorway signage system for Britain. Their design was a functional and yet elegant signage system that became a model for many other countries’ signage systems. One of their most important and earliest achievements was in the field of information design for their development of the typeface ‘Transport’. Before, road signage was typically only in all capital letters, however ‘Transport’ used a combination of majuscule and minuscule while still being legible even from a great distance due to its letterforms. She also designed numerous pictograms for the new signs, for example, ‘men at work’ and ‘school kids crossing’. Kinneir made Calvert partner and renamed the office to be Kinneir Calvert Associates in 1964. Their design work was fully collaborative and resulted in the sign system for the British rail, airports, hospitals, military and for the UK’s Tyne & Wear Metro in 1980. After Kinneir retired in 1979, she developed her own studio. She also taught at the Royal College of Art in London, where she was the director of the department of graphic arts and design from 1987 to 1991. She was one of the first women to be inducted into the AGI in 1976. In 2006, she and Kinneir were exhibited in the Design Museum in London. In 2011, she collaborated with one of her former students, Henrik Kubel to digitize the typeface ‘Transport’ and ‘Rail Alphabet.’
Typefaces • Calvert (1980) • Motorway (1958)
• Transport (1963) • New Rail Alphabet (2009)
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