F.H.K. Henrion (b.1914; d.1990)

Having adopted British nationality in 1946, Frederic Henri Kay Henrion was born in Nuremberg on April 18 1914. From 1933 to 1934, Henrion trained as a textile designer in Paris with Fred Levi. Henrion studied at the Atelier Paul Colin from 1934 to 1935, also in Paris, as a poster and general graphic designer. Under Colin, Henrion became familiar with the posters of A.M. Cassandre and modern art developments, particularly surrealism. In 1935, Henrion won the first prize at the Salon d’electicité, Paris, and again in 1936 at the Salon de TSF. Between 1936 and 1939 Henrion had offices in Paris and London, where he designed posters, packaging and exhibitions, and exhibited worldwide including at the International Levant Fair Tel-Aviv (1936); the MARS exhibition, London (1936), the Paris World Exhibition (1937) and the New York World Fair (1939). When war broken out in 1939, he left France for good, with an early commission to design for the Smoke Abatement Exhibition.

During the war, Henrion was appointed consultant for the exhibitions division of the Ministry of Information, and the American Office of War Information in London. It was over the wartime period that Henrion’s work became familiar to the British public, and he established his reputation, as he produced a prolific number of public information posters, on a wide variety of subjects, including Red Army Day, VD and a gas exhibition. Henrion utilised a varied design approach, with many of his posters using skilful photo-montage and surreal compositions. From 1943 to 1946 he designed all the exhibitions of the Ministry of Agriculture. In discussion with Abram Games, Henrion approved of the Royal Society of accidents, and noted in Art and Industry in 1943 that ROSPA ‘have a definite policy and … commission posters in accordance with this policy with the result that they are producing some of the best posters of the war’. Henrion’s work was ‘familiar to thousands’. He believed in ‘aesthetically conceived design’, with the ‘idea’ the dominant factor, but with no need for a poster to be an ‘eyesore’. Henrion’s ideas on wartime poster design can be seen in a special edition of Art and Industry, in a debate with Games, in July 1943. Henrion clearly believed in the importance of the message, and worked (mostly voluntarily) for causes for which he felt deeply, such as Oxfam, revealing ‘another aspect of his ability to communicate important messages’. In 1947 he married Daphne Hardy, with whom he had had two sons and one daughter.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Henrion worked for advertising agencies and publishers, and was art editor of Contact and Futura magazines and The Compleat Imbiber. In 1951, he established the design consultancy Henrion Design Associates, which had numerous leading companies as clients, including KLM (Dutch airline), British Leyland and Olivetti. He was awarded an OBE for his contribution to the Festival of Britain pavilions. In the 1960s, he was a consultant to the British Transport Commission and consultant on house style design to British Olivetti and other industries. His work won him five awards at the international poster exhibition in Vienna, 1946, and was shown in London, 1951 and 1960, Stockholm, 1953, Paris, 1954, Lausanne, 1957, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and in various touring exhibitions in the USA from 1953 to 1958. The notion of a house style and corporate identity itself are often associated with Henrion, and with Alan Parkin (with whom he had worked with on the KLM project), produced the seminal work Design Co-ordination and the Corporate Image in 1968, based on a mathematical systematic approach. A respected spokesperson for his profession, Henrion was president of AGI and Master of Faculy of RDI (1972-73); an influential teacher who lectured at Royal College of Art, London (1955-65); and leader of the faculty of visual communication at the London College of Printing (1976-79). In 1982 Henrion became a consultant for Henrion, Lund and Schmidt, corporate identity specialists. An exhibition of Henrion’s work was held at Staffordshire Polytechnic in 1989, the first place to offer a design/graphic design course, largely based upon the influence of Henrion.

Information taken from: All About Posters, FHK Henrion, http://www.all-about-posters.com/fhk_henrion.html, accessed August 28 2003; Hope, M. FHK Henrion, Five Decades a Designer, 1989, p.6; Livingston, A. and Livingston, I., Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, 1992, p.98; Amstutz, W.Who’s Who in Graphic Art 1962, p.241; Darracott, J. and Loftus, B., Second World War Posters, 1981 (1972), p.34; Brockhampton Press Dictionary of Design, 1997, p.97; ‘”Aesthetic” Posters as Answer to Critics’, Advertiser’s Weekly, October 12 1944, p.74; ‘The Poster Designer and His Problems’, Art and Industry, Vol.35, No.205, July 1943, pp.17-26

Related Texts

• Bos, B. & Henrion, F.K. The Image of a Company, 1990
• F.H.K. Henrion Visual, Communication, 1987
• F.H.K. Henrion (editor) AGI Annals, 1989

Related Links

• FHK Henrion Archive
  This important archive has recently been relocated in the DHRC at the University of Brighton. German by birth, Henrion first trained as a textile designer in Paris before employment as a graphic designer in the studio of Paul Colin. After establishing his reputation working in Paris and London during the interwar years, he came to Britain in 1939. During the War he was a prolific poster designer for the Ministry of Information and, in 1951, established Henrion Design Associates, a consultancy concerned with exhibition, graphic and product design. HDA worked for many leading companies including KLM, British European Airways and Girobank. A founder member of ICOGRADA, he also played a significant role in the development of British design education. HDA later became more overtly international in scope through its retitling as HDA International in 1973 and later reconfigured as Henrion, Ludlow & Schmidt in 1982.
• See Colin, P., ‘Paul Colin Looks at the World’s War Posters’, Art and Industry, Vol. 39, No.231, September 1945, pp.87-90 for Paul Colin’s thoughts on wartime poster design.

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Leslie Grimes (b.1898; d.1983)

Grimes was born in Chertsey, Surrey, and then attended Kingston Art School, later studying in Paris. He joined the Army (underage) in 1915, spending two years on the Somme before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps. Grimes worked in advertising before he took up cartooning, with Douglas Motorbikes one of his main clients (and as a hobby raced at Brooklands hanging out of ‘sidecars’, which his son describes as ‘more like planks’. He also did ‘technical drawings’ for Motor Sport, illustrating the latest developments before the photos were available. In 1927 he succeeded David Low as political cartoonist on The Star newspaper in 1927. He produced many posters for the LCC and the Ministry of Labour, and one of the ‘keep mum’ series.

Grimes did some posters for the LCC Evening classes which for a time adorned the then boarded up Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus, amongst other sites (along with newspaper adverts). In an article illustrated with Grime’s early poster effort ‘He’s Gone to LCC Evening Classes’, Advertiser’s Weekly noted that unlike most large posters, where simplicity was usually advocated, Grimes used a lot of detail. Grimes, however, had kept the detail ‘in the background where it would not distract attention’. Grimes worked as a cartoonist for The London Evening Star, starting the series “All My Own Work” in 1938 – a series which went on the reflect many of the preoccupations of wartime Britons. Advertiser’s Weekly felt that newspaper cartoonists ‘often make very good poster artists’, potentially because ‘they have trained themselves to eliminate unnecessary details’. Grimes also went to the front as an ‘official’ war artist during the Second World War.

In 1952 Grimes retired and went to Spain to paint.

Information collated from: Anonymous, ‘Remember?’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 1,614, April 27 1944, p.96; Emails from Bruce Grimes and Gerald Grimes, sons of Leslie Grimes, March 2005; Crawford, J., ‘All his own work’, Picture Postcard Monthly, November 1998, p.14

Tom Eckersley (b.1914; d.1996)

Born in Lowton, Lancashire, Eckersley was educated at Lords College, Bolton, and Salford College of Art under Martin Tyas. He worked in London as a graphic designer from 1934, in partnership with Eric Lombers until 1940. He won the Heywood medal of merit in 1935, was appointed teacher of poster design at the Westminster School of Art in 1937 and taught there until 1939. He established his reputation as a graphic designer during the Second World War, continuing to design posters for public service agencies like the Ministry of Information, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, and the General Post Office whilst a cartographer with the Royal Air Force 1940-45.

He established a successful freelance graphic design practice in 1945, working for various groups and concerns including London Transport, the General Post Office, London Press Exchange, W.S. Crawford, British Aluminium, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and KLM. In 1948 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to British poster design. He was head of the graphic design department at the London College of Printing from 1957 to 1976. Designated Royal Designer for Industry in 1961 for his work in the field of graphics, Eckersley was elected RDI in 1963, and awarded the Chartered Society of Designers Medal in 1990. A member of AGI, Eckersley was represented by Artist Partners Ltd in the 1950s.

Eckerlsley’s working method was summarised in Art and Industry in January 1947, where his work was described as ruthlessly scrapping the ‘non-essential, by the perfect mating of chosen word with chosen picture, he wings the total message’. Ten years later Art and Industry described Eckersley as a ‘poster artist who knows how to dispense with words’. He was a Fellow of the Society of Industrial Artists, a Member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale, Governor of Gravesend School of Art and Senior Lecturer at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts. His posters were widely exhibited in America and on the continent.

Information taken from: Darracott, J. and Loftus, B., Second World War Posters, 1981, p.26; Amstutz, W. Who’s Who in Graphic Art, 1962 p.230; Livingston, A, and Livingston, I., Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, 1992, p60; http://www.artistpartners.com/mainpages/ap_retro.html; Gowing, M., ‘What Made the Umbrella Weep, Mr. Eckersley?’, Art and Industry, Vol. 42, No.247, January 1947, pp.2-7; Gowing, M., ‘The Creative Mind in Advertising: Tom Eckersley OBE’, Art and Industry, Vol. 63, No. 377, November 1957, pp.158-163; 180.

Related texts: Eckersley, T,. Poster Design, 1954

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Bruce Angrave (d.1983)

Born in Leicester, Bruce Angrave studied at Chiswick Art School, Ealing School of Art and the Central School of Art, London. He worked as a freelance book illustrator and periodical illustrator, designer and sculptor (including paper works for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and Expo 70 in Japan). A member of the Society of Industrial Artists (SIA), his poster designs were influenced by Tom Eckersley, Lewitt-Him and Abram Games. His poster style was described by Advertiser’s Weekly as ‘distinctive and often bizarre’. He believed that a poster should be approved or discarded within two seconds, and disapproved of the ‘conference table’ method. He felt that there should be nothing ‘obscurantist’ about a good poster, but that it should contain enough ‘complex material to be interesting after several encounters’. After the war, Art and Industry described Angrave’s work as ‘clear, uncluttered line, reduced everything to the simplest possible terms, and invests his work with gaiety and derisive wit that is unmistakable’.

Information collated from: ‘Bruce Angrave’, Poster Database, London Transport Museum; Angrave, B., ‘Bruce Angrave Analyses Elements of the Good Poster’, Advertiser’s Weekly, September 14 1944, p.395; Roberts, S., ‘Advertising Art – Bruce Angrave’, Art and Industry, Vol. 41, No. 245, November 1946, pp.136-139

Born in Leicester, Bruce Angrave studied at Chiswick Art School, Ealing School of Art and the Central School of Art, London. He worked as a freelance book illustrator and periodical illustrator, designer and sculptor (including paper works for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and Expo 70 in Japan). A member of the Society of Industrial Artists (SIA), his poster designs were influenced by Tom Eckersley, Lewitt-Him and Abram Games. His poster style was described by Advertiser’s Weekly as ‘distinctive and often bizarre’. He believed that a poster should be approved or discarded within two seconds, and disapproved of the ‘conference table’ method. He felt that there should be nothing ‘obscurantist’ about a good poster, but that it should contain enough ‘complex material to be interesting after several encounters’. After the war, Art and Industry described Angrave’s work as ‘clear, uncluttered line, reduced everything to the simplest possible terms, and invests his work with gaiety and derisive wit that is unmistakable’.

Information collated from: ‘Bruce Angrave’, Poster Database, London Transport Museum; Angrave, B., ‘Bruce Angrave Analyses Elements of the Good Poster’, Advertiser’s Weekly, September 14 1944, p.395; Roberts, S., ‘Advertising Art – Bruce Angrave’, Art and Industry, Vol. 41, No. 245, November 1946, pp.136-139

See original post, and images on the London Transport Museum site.

Loire Valley, Here I Come

Dear all

I hope that you have a great couple of weeks. I have set up a number of artist biographies to auto-appear over the next 2 weeks, as I’m back on 12th August, and thanks to my landlady who will be keeping calm and carrying on back in the UK (now the term is over!).

I will be wearing my “Keep Calm and Carry On T-Shirt”, and “Keep Calm and Carry On Apron” whilst I cook for 82 people on a campsite in the Loire Valley with Oak Hall, and as I then bike-sit, and drive down to Provence on the wrong side of the road, before coming back to get back on track with my projects.

I have realised that I haven’t double-checked those links, as I seem to be moving information across from my artists information on my website, so I should do that at some point on my return, when I also have a number of Google Alerts for KCCO to add! Always lots to do, and I have been appointed on a 0.4 fractional contract as a Lecturer in History at the University of Winchester from August, so will be teaching a lot of new material!

Bex

Philip Zec (b.1910; d.1983)

Philip Zec, of Jewish descent, trained at St Martin’s School of Art. He then worked for an advertising agency, where he met William Connor, who later became Cassandra of the Daily Mirror. Zec left the agency to set up his own commercial art studio, which became a great success. On the outbreak of the Second World War, Zec was commissioned by H.G. Bartholomew, editorial director of the Daily Mirror, to whom he was introduced by Connor, to do a daily cartoon. Zec’s strong anti-Hitlerite cartoons ‘were an immediate success with the readers’, and Hitler recognised their power and added Zec’s name to the Nazi Blacklist (to be executed once Britain was defeated). Zec was also personally commissioned to do work for the Ministry of Information byEdwin Embleton.Zec’s cartoons sometimes also upset the British government, particularly his cartoon ‘Don’t waste petrol. It costs lives’, depicting a soldier clinging to a raft, smeared with oil. Produced on March 5 1942, soon after the government decided to increase the price of petrol, Churchill was offended, and organised for MI5 to investigate Zec. They reported that he was left wing, but there was no evidence that he was involved in subversive activities. The Daily Mirror, which had published the cartoon, was given a severe reprimand. Another noted cartoon by Zec was ‘Here you are! Don’t Lose it Again’, issued on V.E. Day, and used again on the front page of the Daily Mirror when the Labour Party won the 1945 General Election. Zec continued to work for the Daily Mirror post-war, elected to the Board of Directors of the Daily Mirror Group before 1951.

Information taken from: Spartacus Schoolnet, ‘Philip Zec’, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jzec.htm, accessed September 21 2003, and Questionnaire submitted by Royall, K. to Embleton, E., Royall, K., ‘Posters of the Second World War: The Fourth Arm of British Defence’, Unpublished M.A.: University of Westminster, 1991, p.123

Related Links

• Philip Zec Exhibition: “Don’t Lose it again!” The war-time cartoons of Philip Zec (4 May – 8 August 2005) (Accompanying book)

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Keep Right Online

“Keep Right Online” describes itself as “the brainchild of necessity. For twelve years, the United Kingdom has been oppressed under the iron fist of socialism; frittering away our hard earned money, our surpluses and our competitiveness. It has reached a critical mass- something most definitely ain’t right. Here at Keep Right Online, we hope to inform and impress, creating the seedlings of right ideas, in the right minds.”

Found this post the funniest!

FREE “Keep Calm and Carry On” Book Competition Winners

Further to this competition to win a free “quotes” book for Keep Calm and Carry On, I am pleased to announce that the winners are as follows!

Those who discovered that Edwin J Embleton was the Studio Manager are as follows:

• Andrew_Holt
• SeriouslyKooky
• Lorweld

A random selection from those who RT’d without the answer have been nominated for the remaining 7 copies:

• JoBy14
• Jas
• WriterCharly
• CheersPhilip
• Alex_Butler
• Peterbjordan
• MariaBarrett

Fougasse (Cyril Kenneth Bird) (b.1887; d.1965)

A great modern twist on a Fougasse poster with regards to careless mobile talking costs lives (Neil has given me permission to put the original in), and he’s also done another image relating to “Police bugged Muslim MP Sadiq Khan” (and he’s sent me some more, which I shall post at a later date). There’s a a lovely design on noise, which I think is a genuine one.

Fougasse was born on 17 December 1887 in London as Cyril Kenneth Bird. Educated at Farmborough Park School, Hampshire from 1898 to 1902, Cheltenham College 1902 to 1904 and King’ College, London 1904 to 1908 where he studied engineering. He attended art classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic and the School of Photo-Engraving and Lithography in Bolt Court, while at King’s College London. Bird took on the pseudonym ‘Fougasse’ in the first world war, meaning ‘a small land mine which might or might not hit the mark’ in the First World War, as the signature ‘Bird’ was already being used by another Punch artist. The name was deemed appropriate for an ex-Royal Engineer, as he had been until wounded at Gallipoli in 1916. Whilst recuperating he started to draw cartoons which he sent to Punch and other magazines. He was successful but continued to take lessons from Percy V Bradshaw by correspondence. He became a regular contributor to Punch, becoming art editor in 1937, editor in 1949, retiring in 1953. When Fougasse was appointed Editor of Punch, Art and Industry ran a celebration of his work, written by his formed ‘master’, Percy V. Bradshaw. Fougasse described how his humour needed to be rooted in reality to be effective, and the method he had used to attract attention during the war years. Other magazines he contributed to were The Bystander, The Graphic, London Opinion, The Stretch and The Tatler.

He had designed his first poster for London Transport in 1935. Fougasse had abandoned commercial art-work about three years before war started, which Advertiser’s Weekly viewed as a loss, of ‘one of the most subtle interpreters of the British idiom that it has ever known’. He returned in order to design posters for the war effort. He was described as ‘the most sought-after humorous artist of our time’. By the Second World War he had become ‘an established cartoonist, illustrator and commercial designer. He offered his services free to the government, suggesting that humour was an ideal vehicle for propaganda, and went on to design a wide range of graphic material in aid of the war effort’. He designed ‘visual propaganda of all kinds: books, booklets, pamphlets, press advertisements and even a film strip’, working for ‘practically every Ministry’ and many other groups. Fougasse was personally commissioned to do work for the MOI by Embleton, Edwin. Fougasse received the C.B.E. in 1946. He died in London on 11 June 1965.

Information taken from: All About Posters, ‘Fougasse’, http://www.all-about-posters.com/fougasse.html, Accessed 28 August 2003; Darracott, J. and Loftus, B., Second World War Posters, 1981 (1972), pp.30-31; ‘Bird, Cyril Kenneth (C.B.E.)’, Anonymous, Who’s Who in Art, 1948; Bradshaw, P.V., ‘Fougasse of Punch’, Art and Industry, Vol. 46, No. 275, May 1949, pp.180-185; ‘Bird, Cyril Kenneth (Fougasse)’, Poster Database, London Transport Museum, accessed February 2000; ‘Advertising and the British Tradition’, Advertiser’s Weekly, February 22 1940, p.140; ‘The Mighty Fougasse’,Advertiser’s Weekly, February 29 1940, p.168; Caption at Power of the Poster exhibition at the V&A, 1997; Livingston, A, and Livingston, I., Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, 1992, p.77; Questionnaire submitted by Royall, K. to Embleton, E., Royall, K., ‘Posters of the Second World War: The Fourth Arm of British Defence’, Unpublished M.A., University of Westminster, 1991, p.123.

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“Calm Down and Carry On”

Awaiting the un-suspension of my @drbexl Twitter account (for nearly 48 hours so far), the #digisymp group have started a #freedrbexl campaign, with which @Ulfilas clearly came up with the slogan most closely linked to all my talk of “Keep Calm and Carry On”, as “Give her her tweets back, then we can Calm Down and Carry On”… fits well, no?!

[17th July] I’m back online @drbexl, also on @ww2poster for more historical type tweets!