The Design Research Unit (DRU) was one of the first generation of British design consultancies combining expertise in architecture, graphics and industrial design. It was founded by the managing director of Stuart Advertising Agency, Marcus Brumwell with Misha Black and Milner Gray in 1943. [1] It became well known for its work in relation to the Festival of Britain in 1951 and its influential corporate identity project for British Rail in 1965. [2] In 2004, DRU merged with Scott Brownrigg architects. [3]
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The group officially formed in 1943 following discussions begun by Marcus Brumwell, and the poet and writer Herbert Read the previous year. An early set of notes proposed a "service equipped to advise on all problems of design", addressing the needs of "the State, Municipal Authorities, Industry or Commerce." They anticipated a post-war demand for technical expertise and a need for "the reconditioning and re-designing public utility services" recommending "contact... with the railway companies, motor coach lines and so on." [4]
Herbert Read became their first member of staff, sharing offices in Kingsway with Mass-Observation, another initiative that Brumwell supported under the umbrella of the Advertising Services Guild. Read was joined by Bernard Hollowood in 1944 and after an unsuccessful tour of factories in the Midlands they engaged the sculptor Naum Gabo to design a new car for Jowett. The contract was terminated by the company in 1945. [5]
Black and Gray were initially committed to wartime roles within the Exhibitions Department for the Ministry of Information. Under their leadership, DRU made important postwar contributions to the Britain Can Make It exhibition (1946) and Festival of Britain (1951). At the invitation of the Council of Industrial Design (afterward Design Council), DRU designed the Quiz Machines that sought to gauge public taste at BCMI, as well as the highly didactic ‘What Industrial Design Means’ display (by Black, Bronek Katz, and R. Vaughan). This marked the beginning of a long association between the two bodies. For the Festival of Britain they were the architects for the Regatta Restaurant and designed a series of displays for the Dome of Discovery.[ citation needed ]
Key DRU commissions included the 1954 Electricity Board Showrooms, by Black, Gibson, and H. Diamond, the BOAC engineering hall at London Airport (Heathrow) by Black, Kenneth Bayes, and BOAC staff from 1951 to 1955, and a number of interiors for the P&O Orient Line's new liner Oriana by Black and Bayes in 1959. Other companies for whom DRU worked included Ilford, Courage, Watney Combe & Reid [6] Dunlop, London Transport, and British Railways. The 1968 City of Westminster street name signs by Misha Black (typography and implementation by Christopher Timings and Roger Bridgman) have become an integral part of London's streetscape.[ citation needed ]
Since that time, DRU worked for many high-profile companies, in interior design, graphic design and architecture. Projects of note include:
National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the passenger services previously provided by the British Railways Board, from 1965 using the brand name British Rail. Northern Ireland, which is bordered by the Republic of Ireland, has a different system. National Rail services share a ticketing structure and inter-availability that generally do not extend to services which were not part of British Rail.
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951.
A gender symbol is a pictogram or glyph used to represent sex and gender, for example in biology and medicine, in genealogy, or in the sociological fields of gender politics, LGBT subculture and identity politics.
Rail Alphabet is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert for signage on the British Rail network. First used at Liverpool Street station, it was then adopted by the Design Research Unit (DRU) as part of their comprehensive 1965 rebranding of the company. It was later used by other public bodies in the United Kingdom.
Margaret Vivienne Calvert is a British typographer and graphic designer who, with colleague Jock Kinneir, designed many of the road signs used throughout the United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies, and British Overseas Territories, as well as the Transport font used on road signs, the Rail Alphabet font used on the British railway system, and an early version of the signs used in airports. The typeface developed by Kinneir and Calvert was further developed into New Transport and used for the single domain GOV.UK website in the United Kingdom.
Misha Black was a British-Azerbaijani architect and designer. In 1933 he founded with associates in London the organisation that became the Artists' International Association. In 1943, with Milner Gray and Herbert Read, Black founded Design Research Unit, a London-based Architectural, Graphic Design and Interior Design Company.
Transport is a sans serif typeface first designed for road signs in the United Kingdom. It was created between 1957 and 1963 by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert as part of their work as designers for the Department of Transport's Anderson and Worboys committees.
Richard "Jock" Kinneir was a British typographer and graphic designer who, with his colleague Margaret Calvert, designed many of the road signs used throughout the United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies, and British overseas territories. Their system has become a model for modern road signage.
The Design and Industries Association is a United Kingdom charity whose object is to engage with all those who share a common interest in the contribution that design can make to the delivery of goods and services that are sustainable and enhance the quality of life for communities and the individual."
Motorway is a sans-serif typeface designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert for use on the motorway network of the United Kingdom. Motorway was first used on the M6 Preston bypass in 1958 and has been in use on the UK's motorways ever since. The typeface is also used in some other countries, most notably Ireland and Portugal.
Milner Connorton Gray CBE (1899–1997) was one of the key figures of British industrial design in the 20th century, having played an important role in establishing design as a recognized profession, the emergence of British design consultancies, and the development of Design Management.
Britain Can Make It was an exhibition of industrial and product design held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1946. It was organised by the Council of Industrial Design, later to become the Design Council.
Sir Walter John Worboys, was an Australian-born British businessman and chemist. He is best known for widely reforming road traffic signage in the United Kingdom.
The British Rail Corporate Identity Manual is a corporate identity guide created in 1965 by British Rail. It was conceived in 1964, and finished in July 1965 by British Rail's Design Research Unit, and introduced British Rail's enduring double arrow logo, created by Gerald Barney and still in use today as the logo for National Rail. The manual spanned four volumes, and was created as part of a comprehensive redesign of British Rail following the Beeching Cuts as part of a plan to attract more passengers. It is noted as a piece of British design history.
Jacqueline Groag was an influential textile designer in Great Britain in the period following World War II. She produced and designed fabrics for leading Parisian fashion houses including Chanel, Lanvin, House of Worth, Schiaparelli and Paul Poiret.
John Robert Marcus Brumwell was a British advertising pioneer, designer, businessman, political activist, and art collector.
The British Rail Double Arrow is a logo that was created for British Rail (BR), the then state-owned operator of Britain's railway network, in 1965. It has remained in use as part of the National Rail brand used for Britain's passenger rail services after the disbanding of British Rail, having been officially renamed as the National Rail Double Arrow and more recently being updated and reworked for continued use under the name Rail Symbol 2.
Gerald Lawrence Barney is a British designer, best known for his 1965 British Rail Double Arrow, which is still in use in the UK.
Creek Vean is the Grade II* listed residential property in the village of Feock in Cornwall, England. It was the first building designed by Team 4, being commissioned by Su Brumwell's parents, Marcus Brumwell and Irene Brumwell. Construction began in 1963 and it was completed in 1966.
Classics of design
One of the best early examples of intuitive global signs for public lavatories was that created for British Rail in the mid-1960s. As part of a major modernisation programme, the state railway was given a new and all-embracing corporate identity by DRU [Design Research Unit], a design studio founded by Marcus Brumwell and Misha Black in 1943. Working with Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir, who designed a distinctive Rail Alphabet typeface based on Helvetica, DRU devised a clean-cut and convincingly modern aesthetic that was applied to all locomotives, trains, stations, published material and, yes, signs for lavatories.— Glancey, Jonathan (11 September 2014). "The genius behind stick figure toilet signs". BBC.