Armistice Day

Today is Armistice Day, also know as Remembrance Day or Poppy Day and is a memorial day observed in the UK and the Commonwealth since the end of the First World War. Many people will observe a two minute silence at 11am and also at Remembrance Sunday, which is the following Sunday. Most of the coverage is focused on those that served in the armed forces (and quite rightly so) but I thought I'd write today about an individual who was a designer, typographer and illustrator, who also wore a uniform.

Some of you will have heard of Abram Games. During the Second World War he was appointed 'Official War Poster Artist' and designed over 100 posters. It's worth remembering that posters were one of the most effective ways of getting messages across to a mass of people and had equal if not greater importance than newspapers, magazines or the radio; and exceptionally well designed posters could be exceptionally effective!

I was fortunate enough to meet his daughter, Naomi Games, who gave an excellent talk about his life and work, including the war years.

Click on images to enlarge

Abram Games was born in 1914. He attended St Martin's School of Art and was already working as a commercial artist before the war. Following 6 months training in the infantry, he was transferred as a draughtsman and after winning a competition to design a poster, was posted to the War Office in June 1941 and his work designing posters for the war effort began.

These images are taken from a booklet about the work of Abram Games, printed on Omnia, which I wrote about here.

In November 1942 he was promoted to Lieutenant and became the Official War Poster Artist, a title never before or since claimed by any other artist. You can see much more of his work here:
https://www.abramgames.com/

Click on images to enlarge

He tried to re-join his regiment, concerned that he had a "cushy job". His commanding officer replied 'You have been appointed to do a job and as far as the army is concerned, you are the only man who can do this and you will bloody well get on and do it! We can always replace a soldier, but we cannot replace you'. He ended the war as a Captain and had designed over 100 posters. Very few examples survive, as they were pinned or pasted up and rarely endured the war.

In 2019, there was an excellent exhibition of his wartime posters at the National Army Museum called 'The Art of Persuasion' and I was kindly shown round by Malcom Clarke at the NAM.

Alistair Hall of We Made This wrote about his visit to the exhibition in an article which puts my writing and photography on this blog to shame! ...so I suggest you have a look: https://www.wemadethis.co.uk/blog/2019/04/abram-games-the-art-of-persuasion/

Here is the exhibition guide...

After the war, Abram Games had a wonderfully successful career with a prodigious output. He designed the symbol for the 1951 Festival of Britain and clients included Guinness, the Financial Times, British Airways, London Transport and British Rail.

Although not serving on the front line, Abram Games was an exceptionally important part of the war effort and like the millions of other exceptional, yet ordinary, people who made their own quiet contribution to the eventual victory over the Nazis, deserves to be celebrated.

https://www.abramgames.com/
https://www.nam.ac.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.11.2022

75th Anniversary of VE Day

Today is a bank holiday to celebrate the day that 75 years ago marked Victory in Europe. With the current Covid-19 Lockdown restrictions, the remembrance will be less prominent in public, although with people forced to stay at home, it might actually mean that they reflect more about the event. Most of the coverage is focused on those that served in the armed forces (and quite rightly so) but I thought I'd write today about an individual who was a designer, typographer and illustrator, who also wore a uniform.

Some of you will have heard of Abram Games. During the Second World War he was appointed 'Official War Poster Artist' and designed over 100 posters. It's worth remembering that posters were one of the most effective ways of getting messages across to a mass of people and had equal if not greater importance than newspapers, magazines or the radio; and exceptionally well designed posters could be exceptionally effective!

I was fortunate enough to meet his daughter, Naomi Games, who gave an excellent talk about his life and work, including the war years.

Click on images to enlarge

Abram Games was born in 1914. He attended St Martin's School of Art and was already working as a commercial artist before the war. Following 6 months training in the infantry, he was transferred as a draughtsman and after winning a competition to design a poster, was posted to the War Office in June 1941 and his work designing posters for the war effort began.

These images are taken from a booklet about the work of Abram Games, printed on Omnia, which I wrote about here.

In November 1942 he was promoted to Lieutenant and became the Official War Poster Artist, a title never before or since claimed by any other artist. You can see much more of his work here:
https://www.abramgames.com/

Click on images to enlarge

He tried to re-join his regiment, concerned that he had a "cushy job". His commanding officer replied 'You have been appointed to do a job and as far as the army is concerned, you are the only man who can do this and you will bloody well get on and do it! We can always replace a soldier, but we cannot replace you'. He ended the war as a Captain and had designed over 100 posters. Very few examples survive, as they were pinned or pasted up and rarely endured the war.

Last year, there was an excellent exhibition of his wartime posters at the National Army Museum called 'The Art of Persuasion' and I was kindly shown round by Malcom Clarke at the NAM.

Alistair Hall of We Made This wrote about his visit to the exhibition in an article which puts my writing and photography on this blog to shame! ...so I suggest you have a look: https://www.wemadethis.co.uk/blog/2019/04/abram-games-the-art-of-persuasion/

Here is the exhibition guide...

After the war, Abram Games had a wonderfully successful career with a prodigious output. He designed the symbol for the 1951 Festival of Britain and clients included Guinness, the Financial Times, British Airways, London Transport and British Rail.

Although not serving on the front line, Abram Games was an exceptionally important part of the war effort and like the millions of other exceptional, yet ordinary, people who made their own quiet contribution to the eventual victory over the Nazis, deserves to be celebrated.

https://www.abramgames.com/
https://www.nam.ac.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 08.05.2020

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

Abram Games, Designs with Type

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.

This small booklet was designed to accompany a talk by his daughter, Naomi Games, to the Wynkyn de Worde society.

The size of the publication is A6 (148x105mm) portrait and is saddle stitched. It is a 16pp self cover and is digitally printed (HP Indigo) on our Omnia Natural 120gsm.

Click on images to enlarge

The work in this booklet is a combination of his work before WW2, during WW2 (as the only official War Poster Artist) and his work in peacetime.

Click on images to enlarge

The publication is digitally printed by Typecast Colour, based in Paddock Wood, Kent. It was printed on their Xerox digital press and the result is excellent. The great thing is the job just doesn't look and feel like a digital job, which is mainly down to the choice of substrate.

As a 16pp 'self cover' saddle stitched publication, it sits nice and flat.

Booklet design is by Paul Harpin. Printing is by Typecast based in Paddock Wood in Kent.

I have a few file copies of this publication available, so if you would like one, please drop me an email (justin@fennerpaper.co.uk)

It's also just worth pointing out that the work of Abram Games, along with many other pioneering Jewish émigré designers is being shown in the 'Designs on Britain' exhibition at the Jewish Museum in London until  15th April

https://www.abramgames.com/about
http://www.typecast.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 27.01.2018

To The Trains

Yesterday evening I was at the St Brides Foundation in London for the launch of a wonderful notebook titled "To the Trains". The project was a collaboration between design agency Carter Wong, printer Boss Print and us! This is the fourth notebook in the series, each one with a different and equally fascinating subject!

This edition showcases the tiles on display throughout the London underground system and the rich history that accompanies them.

The evening started with lashings of beer and wine and the opportunity to look at the images that are the subject of the book taken by photographer Josh Exell.

There was then an introduction to the project by Sarah Turner, Managing Director of Carter Wong followed by a short presentation of the influence of Leslie Green, who was appointed in 1903 to design over 50 stations for the underground and introduced a wayfinding system using symbols set in tiles. As you can see, there were over 150 people who attended....

The splendour of Green's original designs continues to excite and the tile work has been joined in more recent times, as refurbishment takes place, by prestigious artists and designers such as Abram Games, Alan Fletcher, Nicholas Munro and Eduardo Paolozzi.

...and here is the actual notebook that was the centre of attention. 

The wonderfully debossed cover is on a vinyl based cover material. Flexible, durable and just right for a notebook. There are a number of different cover/colour combinations available, this is the deep, burgundy red. Below shows the opening spread...

...a birds eye view showing the binding and the pages with the images of the tiles printed, which are "french folded"

The below image shows a spread of the notebook with the image page on the right - what you cannot see and is impossible to show/photograph is that the tiles are all beautifully and superbly embossed, so they are actually in relief - a truly amazing effect.

...I hope the image below shows just how three dimensional the result is.

Below are the tiles by Abram Games (Stockwell, 1969) where I hope you can see the french folding and the embossing.

As you can see from the above image, the book lies nice and flat - because it has been sewn and cold glued, so it lays beautifully flat. The paper used in the books is our Redeem 100% Recycled 80gsm for the text pages and our new Gardapat 13, Bianka 135gsm for the tile pages.

Printing is all offset litho. Embossing, binding and finishing is all by Boss print and it is all to an exceptionally high standard.

I had a small display, showing our ranges and printed examples and was kept busy all evening! Below I'm talking to Jason Maclaren from Cantate Communications.

A big thank you to Carter Wong, Boss Print and of course, our friends at the St Brides Foundation who made the event special as always.

http://www.carterwongdesign.com/
https://www.bossprint.com/
http://www.sbf.org.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson on 29.11.2017