My journey as a graphic designer, an introduction

From 1968 to 2020 I have worked as a Graphic Designer or, as we used to say when I started out, a Commercial Artist. It is not easy to describe the progression from one-man-band to successful design consultancy and back again, or to illustrate the many changes that have occurred over the period, but here is my attempt. Hopefully, it goes some way towards telling the story of graphic design’s evolution during the my working life.

This is not a complete portfolio of my work or wholly representative of all we did as a design consultancy, as much of the work has been lost over time. Nor have I included my research and consultancy work, audio-visual, video and TV projects, and for simplicity, many of our 100-plus clients are not represented here. What you see is just a fraction of the 10,000-plus design jobs that we completed over the years.

The history is divided into the Parts shown below, or you can use the ‘next’ button to follow the story chronologically.

Part 01 – 1960s In the Beginning: Undergraduate work

Part 02 – 1970s The Royal College of Art & The Advent of Colour

Part 03 – 1970s Starting Out in the Real World

Part 04 – 1970s My First Major Client

Part 05 – 1970s More Than One Man

Part 06 – 1970s Striking It Lucky

Part 07 – 1970s Embracing Ground-breaking Techniques

Part 08 – 1980s Changing Roles for Designers

Part 09 – 1980s Our First Technology Client

Part 10 – 1980s Growing Through Recommendation

Part 11 – 1980s The Dream Client

Part 12 – 1980s Moving into Corporate Design

Part 13 – 1990s Ramping Up the Workload

Part 14 – 1990s Graphic Design goes Global

Part 15 – 1990s A Steep Learning Curve

Part 16 – 1990s Working for The Nation’s Favourite

Part 17 – 1990s The Challenge of the Future

Part 18 – 1990s Picking up the Crumbs

Part 19 – 1990s Vested Interest

Part 20 – 1990s Setting the Standard

Part 21 – 1990s Still Growing after All These Years

Part 22 – 1990s New Business from Old

Part 23 – 1990s Keeping up with Demand

Part 24 – 1990s A Full-Service Consultancy

Part 25 – 1990s Into the Unknown

Part 26 – 2000s Learning New Tricks

Part 27 – 2000s Lifestyle Publishing Moves on

Part 28 – 2010s and Now…