Malcolm Garrett

Last updated

Malcolm Leslie Garrett MBE RDI FRSA (born 1956) is a British graphic designer, and Creative Director of Images&Co, a communications design consultancy based in London, UK. He is Ambassador for Manchester School of Art and co-founder of the annual Design Manchester festival, which has run since 2013.

Contents

He came to prominence in the late 70s and early 80s through his work for music artists such as Buzzcocks, Magazine, Duran Duran, Simple Minds, Heaven 17 and Peter Gabriel. He was an early convert to exploring the opportunities and challenges of design with digital technology, and his London studio was amongst the first of its peers to go totally digital in 1990.

Overview

In 1998, Garrett received a Prince Philip Designers Prize nomination in recognition of his achievements in design for business and society. In 2003, he was named by Design Week as one of the "Hot 50 people making a difference in design" for his work as design ambassador. Garrett continues his design practice as Creative Director of IMAGES&Co based in London, and heads a team which develops leading-edge communications in lifestyle, culture, manufacturing, healthcare and education, through a connected approach to design and technology

In November 2013, Malcolm Garrett was elected Master of the Faculty of Royal Designers. He is a Fellow of the International Society of Typographic Designers (FISTD) and holds honorary Doctorates of Design from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, University of the Arts London, and London South Bank University.

He is a member of the Sir Misha Black Awards Committee, a founder member of the 5D World Builders at University of Southern California, and a former member of the BAFTA Interactive Entertainments Committee.

In 2015 he was one of the first ten designers to be inducted into the inaugural Design Week Hall of Fame and in 2017 he was named one of fifty Creative Leaders by Creative Review.

Life and work

Garrett was born in Northwich, England, and attended St Ambrose College. He studied typography at the University of Reading from 1974 until 1975 and graphic design at Manchester Polytechnic from 1975 until 1978. [1] A fellow student of Garrett's at Manchester Polytechnic was Peter Saville, a graphic designer who would also design prominent record sleeves in the late 1970s and early 1980s. [2]

His first notable work was design for the punk rock group Buzzcocks, including the iconic cover for their 1977 single "Orgasm Addict". [1] Until 1994, Garrett was the design director of Assorted iMaGes, the design company he had formed in 1977. His work there included "graphic identity, exhibition design, television graphics, and literature design." [3] His work for musical artists included Magazine, Duran Duran, Boy George, Simple Minds, Peter Gabriel. [4] and Heaven 17 [5] The sleeves that Garrett designed for Duran Duran (from 1981 until 1986) include their first four albums (Duran Duran, Rio, Seven and the Ragged Tiger (together with Keith Breeden) and Arena) and their associated singles such as "Planet Earth", "Is There Something I Should Know?" and "The Reflex".[ citation needed ]

In the early 1990s, Garrett was increasingly attracted to working solely with digital technology and in 1994 he teamed up with Alasdair Scott to form AMXdigital (later called AMXstudios), an interactive media production company. [6] Garrett left AMX when that company merged with Zinc to form Arnold Interactive in 2001. [7]

Garrett worked at I-mmersion in Toronto but returned to London in 2005 to become Creative Director at Applied Information Group (AIG), subsequently collaborating with X-Communications in Dublin, and Cogapp in Brighton on a variety of projects. He left AIG in January 2011 to form the interactive media design consultancy 53K with Kasper de Graaf, his former partner at Assorted iMaGes. In January 2013 53K merged with Foreground Digital to form IMAGES&Co.[ citation needed ]

Garrett served on numerous committees including BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Committee and FontShop Type Board in Berlin. He currently sits on the RDI Executive Committee, Eye Magazine Editorial Board, the London Science Museum Advisory Board, and The Sir Misha Black Awards Committee. He was creative director of Dynamo, an online showcase and forum for the interactive media industry, and of the i-Design interactive media conference held at the London Design Festival from 2007-09. He is a founder member of the 5D World Builders at 5D Institute at USC in California. He is noted for his collaborative approach to design and his commitment to design education. Malcolm is an ambassador for the Manchester School of Art and co-curator of the annual Design Manchester festival. [8]

Garrett was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to design. [9] In 2021 he performed on stage with Heaven 17, providing live visuals to go alongside their music throughout the concerts [10] [11]

Articles by Garrett

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Carter</span> British type designer (born 1937)

Matthew Carter is a British type designer. A 2005 New Yorker profile described him as 'the most widely read man in the world' by considering the amount of text set in his commonly used fonts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Letraset</span>

Letraset was a company known mainly for manufacturing sheets of typefaces and other artwork elements using the dry transfer method. Letraset has been acquired by the Colart group and become part of its subsidiary Winsor & Newton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Saville (graphic designer)</span> British graphic designer (born 1955)

Peter Andrew Saville is an English art director and graphic designer. He designed many record sleeves for Factory Records, which he co-founded in 1978 alongside Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus.

Zuzana Licko is a Slovak-born American type designer and visual artist known for co-founding Emigre Fonts, a digital type foundry in Berkeley, CA. She has designed and produced numerous digital typefaces including the popular Mrs Eaves, Modula, Filosofia, and Matrix. As a corresponding interest she also creates ceramic sculptures, textile prints and jacquard weavings.

Vaughan Oliver was a British graphic designer based in Epsom, Surrey. Oliver was best known for his work with graphic design studios 23 Envelope and v23. Both studios maintained a close relationship with record label 4AD between 1982 and 1998 and gave distinct visual identities for the 4AD releases by many bands, including Mojave 3, Lush, Cocteau Twins, The Breeders, This Mortal Coil, Pale Saints, Pixies, and Throwing Muses. Oliver also designed record sleeves for such artists as David Sylvian, The Golden Palominos, and Bush.

Romek Marber was a Polish-born British graphic designer and academic known for his work illustrating the covers of Penguin Books. He retired in 1989, becoming a Professor Emeritus of Middlesex University.

Keith Breeden RP is a graphic designer and portraitist. He is a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

<i>Eye</i> (magazine) British graphic design magazine

Eye magazine is a quarterly print magazine on graphic design and visual culture.

Rick Poynor is an English writer on design, graphic design, typography, and visual culture.

23 Envelope was the name given to the graphic design partnership of graphic designer Vaughan Oliver and photographer/filmmaker Nigel Grierson from 1980–1988. During this time, they created a distinct visual identity for the British independent music label 4AD through their record sleeve designs for bands such as Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and This Mortal Coil.

Jeffery Keedy, born 1957, is an American graphic designer, type designer, writer and educator. He is notable as an essayist and contributor to books and periodicals on graphic design. He is also notable for the design of Keedy Sans, a typeface acquired in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 2011.

Design Observer is a website devoted to a range of design topics including graphic design, social innovation, urbanism, popular culture, and criticism. The content of the site includes essays, articles, reviews, blog posts, and peer reviewed scholarship. It is the host of the architecture and urban design publication Places and the podcast Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

An exhibition curated by Rick Poynor at the Barbican Art Gallery (2004) charting over 40 years of graphic design in the United Kingdom.

Walter Valentine Tracy RDI was an English type designer, typographer and writer.

Alan Aboud is an Irish graphic designer and creative director, from Dublin, Ireland. He was educated at Belvedere College, Dublin from 1974–1984 and the National College of Art & Design (NCAD), Dublin where he completed his foundation year and began his degree in graphic design before transferring to Saint Martin's School of Art in London in 1986. He graduated from there in 1989, with a first class honours degree.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compacta (typeface)</span> Typeface

Compacta is a condensed sans-serif typeface designed by Fred Lambert for Letraset in 1963. It is visually similar to the typefaces Impact and Haettenschweiler, though Compacta has a distinctively square shape in comparison. Letraset was a dry transfer system, widely used by amateur or small-scale lettering projects, although many professional designers used it as well. Compacta was Letraset's first original typeface design, and proved widely popular. Rights to it were acquired by Linotype and others, leading to it becoming available in other formats such as digitally.

David King was a British graphic designer, design historian, and writer, who assembled one of the largest collections of Soviet graphics and photographs. From this collection, he created a series of books covering the history of the Russian Revolution and its associated art and propaganda. In addition to Soviet-era photographs, posters, and other materials, his collection included items related to the Spanish Civil War, Maoist China, the Weimar Republic, and American labour organizations. King, a "leftist with Trotskyist leanings", in particular collected photographs and ephemera related to Leon Trotsky, who was extensively doctored out of revolutionary photographs and records under Josef Stalin's regime.

The College of Medallists is an association of recipients of The Sir Misha Black Medal for Distinguished Services in Design Education. Misha Black (1910–1977) was a pioneer of design in Britain. The College of Medallists was established in 2000, and joined the Founding Bodies in supporting the Sir Misha Black Awards. In 2020, the College of Medallists became part of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, with the Imperial College of London as a founding body.

Ben Kelly is a British interior designer, who owns interior design firm Ben Kelly Design. He has also won awards for graphic design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freestyle Script</span> Typeface

Freestyle Script is an informal display script typeface that was designed by Colin Brignall in 1969 and Martin Wait in 1981, by Letraset. Freestyle Script is famously used for commercials in 1980s, birthday cards, decorative, logos and many others. The bold version was designed in 1986. The publishers of this font are Adobe, ITC, Monotype Imaging, Elsner+Flake, Esselte Corporation, Scangraphic Type, Linotype, Image Club, and Letraset. This font has few versions, namely Regular, Bold, LT, Plain, LET, EF, SB, SH, SH Reg Alt, and SB Reg Alt. Freestyle Script font supports up to 78 different languages for cursive (plain) and 33 different languages for other styles. The Cyrillic version of Freestyle Script was created in 1993, consisting of the glyphs in Latin supplement. The font has been included in MyFonts since 2000.

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 Eye, Number 12, Volume 3, 1994, edited by Rick Poynor.
  2. ↑ Eye, Number 17, Volume 5, Summer 1995, edited by Rick Poynor.
  3. ↑ "FontShop Berlin: Schriften und Bilder suchen, vergleichen, downloaden". Fontshop.de. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  4. ↑ "Fuse 95 Speakers". typoberlin.de. Retrieved 8 September 2021.
  5. ↑ "Coming Being Going" (PDF). Malcolm Garrett. May 2020. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  6. ↑ "Adobe Web Center – Gallery – AMX Studios". Adobe.com. 18 June 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  7. ↑ Andy Polaine (19 January 2007). "Dialogue with Malcolm Garrett – Playpen". Polaine.com. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  8. ↑ Design Manchester website
  9. ↑ "No. 63135". The London Gazette (Supplement). 10 October 2020. p. B18.
  10. ↑ Nils van der Linden (8 September 2021). "Heaven 17: Roundhouse, London – live review" . Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  11. ↑ @MalcolmGarrett (3 September 2021). "Setting up for 'The Heaven Seventeen presents… Reproduction Travelogue'" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  12. ↑ "Why the iPad matters". Creative Review. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  13. ↑ "Out of Print". Onviewonline.craftscouncil.org.uk. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  14. ↑ "Malcolm Garrett on the legacy of Steve Jobs | State Magazine". State.ie. 10 October 2011. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  15. ↑ "iOS7: A refreshing return to clarity". Creative Review. Archived from the original on 3 July 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  16. ↑ "RDInsights". RSA. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  17. ↑ "Malcolm Garrett | Computer Arts | Creative Bloq". Computer Arts. 13 April 2010. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.