Abram Games - Shakespeare Kickstarter

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece about a publication featuring the work of Abram Games, which you can read again here.

Abram Games is acknowledged as being one of the 20th Century's greatest image makers, his work is now a fascinating record of social history. For over 60 years he produced some of Britain’s most memorable images including the war years as Official War Poster Artist producing over one hundred posters. He was the designer of the Festival of Britain emblem and his clients included the United Nations, London Transport, British Airways, Shell, the Financial Times, Guinness and of course book jackets for Penguin books. He also created the first animated BBC on-screen ident in 1953.

One of the spreads in my article included this poster that he produced for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre centenary appeal in 1975, featured on the left hand spread below:

The poster was hailed a huge success by the RSC and as far as Abram's family knew at the time, he considered the job completed. But thanks to an exciting discovery we now know that Abram’s intentions for the much-admired image went far further than a poster. After his death in 1996, Abram's daughter and archivist, Naomi Games, happened upon a mock-up he had made of a flickbook based on the poster image. As she turned the pages of the book Shakespeare's face gradually appeared, one play at a time. From the designs she could see that her father had even experimented with getting Shakespeare to wink!

...so please join in the Kickstarter campaign and help make this piece of print a reality:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2109961696/abram-games-the-shakespeare-project

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.05.2018