25.10.07
Bad memory lane

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Rummaging about on my home bookshelves recently I came across this 20 year old tome, The Best of British Corporate Design.

I was really searching to find this logo that was designed by Michael Peters & Partners for the V&A’s trading arm at the same time as Alan Fletcher’s now seminal mark.

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I wanted to show another gallery that ‘trading identities’ were inherently confusing ideas and this still remains the best example – a nice idea in itself, albeit at a time when everyone seemed to have upside/downside logos, but one destined to fight a losing battle against a classic.

Leafing through this (suspiciously un-thumbed) book teleports me back to a period of 80s British design that often makes me cringe. At the time, only a couple of years out of college, this work was going on around me and much of it seemed vital, exciting even. And maybe it will again, in another twenty years. Trouble is, just at the moment, whilst I appreciate that this

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and this

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seemed new at the time, you only have to leaf through another few pages to discover that the brushstroke/torn paper/Matisse vernacular had replaced magic markers as the style of choice across town. Here are some good examples...

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See what I mean about cringing?

The book itself was part of a series produced by Minale Tattersfield on ‘The best of British...’ and indeed contains a suspiciously generous amount of their projects. To anyone who knew Marcello Minale, this comes as no surprise - he would have treated the book as much as PR for himself as for British Design. Just one phone call to the book’s actual designer confirmed what I’d suspected for years – a generation of designers then frustrated by eighties award schemes’ disinterest in their paper collages had inadvertedly spawned this strange beast.

There are great stories of Peter Saville and Jay Smith (of 80s darlings Smith and Milton) having a huge bust-up after he called one of their seminal schemes ‘wine bar graphics’ (ouch), and Marcello returning from D&AD juries complaining about ‘that bloody Mary Lewis’, Lewis’ beautifully crafted thoughts having ousted his clunkier ‘big ideas’ from design’s top table.

But maybe these kind of books are useful, just as good reminders? They remind us that ribbons for Olympics are hardly new, nor are multi coloured lines making Manchester’s ‘M’.

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They remind us that this often publicised mock-up for the Museum of Modern Art Oxford never actually existed as real banners.

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They remind us of the goldfish that was once Bovis’s symbol before the hummingbird won out, that became Addison’s, and then became Goldfish (the credit card) a decade later.

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They remind me that I never, ever, want to see a wine shop identity that looks like this ever again.

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Of course not all of it is dreadful. I still don’t really understand this scheme for British Rail freight but boy it looks great on those trains.

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The Minale’s scheme below for a company comprising eight companies and eight brothers still looks pretty strong.

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In fact the old British Telecom scheme looks, well, kind of groovy, doesn’t it?

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It’s got Web 2.0 rounded type. It’s got ranged left Helvetica. Isn’t yellow coming back into fashion? Hang on a sec, maybe there’s something to be said for this book after all…

By Michael Johnson

The Best of British Corporate Design, designed by Minale Tattersfield, was published in 1989 by Booth-Clibborn Editions. If you’re desperate you'll get one on Abe for about 15 dollars

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