Ken Garland

Photo Credit - unknown

Yesterday, the sad news broke that Ken Garland has passed away. Ken Garland is a designer who has been at the forefront of Britain’s creative culture since graduating in the mid 1950's. His involvement in the CND campaign in the 1960's and his re-drawing of the peace sign made him the driving force behind its visual message. He gained notoriety for writing the ‘First Thing’s First Manifesto’ in 1964, which rallied designers to a mantra of using their talents towards a more meaningful goal, opposing the notion that graphic design is most lucrative when serving the whims of advertising. The manifesto was re-signed and re-launched in 1999. He founded his own agency, Ken Garland & Associates working with a wide variety of clients and most famously, Galt Toys.

Ken was less well known for his photographic work, but that is where our paths crossed. In 2001 Baseline Magazine published a 'baseline edition' an occasional series focusing on a subject more in-depth than in the magazine itself. Titled Metaphors, with a foreward by Robin Kinross, it shows Ken's photographic work from the 1960's up to the millennium. 

At publication, Ken and Wanda hosted a small launch party at their lovely house in Camden Town, which was a particularly jolly occasion.

Size is 345x245mm, portrait. It has a 4pp cover covered with a dustjacket and a 48pp text. 

Click on images to enlarge

"These photographs are not quite what they seem. When combined with the text they become metaphors of the locations - villages, cities, countries even - in which they were found. A few stones; a scattering of coloured tissue; a rope end: all have been allocated a relevance beyond their immediate substance. This may have been the reason why a particular photograph was taken in the first place, or it may have been imposed upon the image subsequently, days, weeks or months after the shot had been made. Originating from places as widely dispersed as Mexico, Ireland, Uzbekistan, Canada, Germany and Bangladesh, these metaphors offer a coherent viewpoint on human behaviour, viewed obliquely for the most part but with compassion and concern for people, not things" Ken Garland

Click on images to enlarge

The text pages are printed on our Marazion Ultra 150gsm. For readers not familiar with Marazion Ultra, it's a fully coated paper but it really does have a dead flat MATT surface. There are many papers on the market which profess to be matt (and some which incorporate the word matt in the name, but aren't!)  

From a format point of view, there is one particularly interesting aspect to this publication...

Hans Dieter Reichert, publisher of Baseline magazine wanted to differentiate this publication from the magazine, which was saddle stitched and he really wanted a spine, although cost-wise, perfect binding was more expensive and the photographic spreads really demanded saddle stitching...

I suggested, using a bookjacket, using a heavier than normal material (our Matrisse 200gsm) which is a bulky uncoated material and would take an excellent crease, and would form a nice neat 5mm square spine for the saddle stitched book to sit in ...and the result is perfect!

Click on images to enlarge

4pp cover is on Mandricote (one sided) 250gsm. Bookjacket is on Matrisse 200gsm.

Design of Metaphors is by Ken Garland & hdr Design. It was printed offset litho by Hilo Printing in Essex.

It was an absolute pleasure to have met Ken at the time of this project and subsequently over the years at various events and lunch at the Wynkyn De Worde Society. My condolences and best wishes to Wanda and their family; Ken will be sorely missed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Garland

Posted by Justin Hobson 21.05.2021

Added 27.05.2021

You can read an excellent account of Ken's life by John Cooper here:

https://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.com/2021/05/britain-says-farewell-to-old-iconoclast.html