Unusually for a graphic designer, Ken Garland, who has died aged 92 of cancer, was not afraid to broadcast his political views. An influential practitioner, inspiring teacher, photographer, writer and performer at design conferences, he was also a lifelong socialist and an avid supporter of CND.
He belonged, as the design historian Robin Kinross has noted, to “the first generation of fully fledged graphic designers in Britain”, one of a number of graduates from the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now part of the University of the Arts London) who made a substantial impact in the second half of the 20th century.
Ken was there from 1952 to 1954, and others included Colin Forbes and Alan Fletcher, who went on to help establish the firm Pentagram, the book designer Derek Birdsall and the designer of National Theatre posters, Ken Briggs.
His studies before Central were interrupted by two years of national service. Remarkably for someone with his anti-authoritarian sensibilities and political allegiances, Ken enjoyed his time in uniform: “I met and talked with many fellow soldiers from Glasgow, South Wales, Liverpool, Newcastle and Birmingham, and knew a lot more about the condition of the working class in Britain than I had before. Also, I had seen through the pretensions of the officer class.”
Ken learned his professional craft and first made his mark as art editor (1956-62) of Design magazine – the official journal of the state-funded Council of Industrial Design (from 1972, the Design Council). The magazine advocated the social benefits of good design, and today Ken’s incisive modernist cover designs enjoy star status on graphic design Instagram feeds.
In 1962, as his freelance work grew, he formed Ken Garland & Associates. Based in Camden Town, north London, in the house where he was to live for the rest of his life, he worked with a small team producing a body of work that combined the clean lines of Swiss typography with the verve of mid-century American graphic expression.
This fusion (he called it a marriage of structure and substance) is best seen in his 20-year association with Galt Toys. With the help of Ken and his team, Galt became the market leader in intelligent toys. With a playful use of sans serif letterforms and striking photography, Ken and his designers produced a body of work for the toymaker that stands comparison with the best graphic design of the time.
Most of what KG&A did was for small and medium-sized firms, arts bodies and housing associations. As well as working for the Labour party, the studio produced a series of posters for CND that are regarded today as exemplars of campaigning activist design. In studio downtime, the team developed their own board games, of which Connect was taken up by Galt.
Unlike his rivals in the booming design industry, Ken avoided working for large corporations. When he received an invitation to meet the chief executive of IBM UK, Ken chose to inform his potential new client that he had never had much success working with big corporations. The IBM boss replied politely that “perhaps a meeting was not a good idea”.
His outlook was distilled in the manifesto he delivered at a meeting in 1963 of the Society of Industrial Artists (SIA). Sitting at the back of the hall and frustrated by the discussions taking place, he wrote out the first draft of what was published the following year as First Things First.
The document called on designers to question their role in the new burgeoning consumer culture that was monopolising the profession: “We are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication. We hope that our society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes.” It was signed by a small band of like-minded practitioners – none from the big design groups of the period.
First Things First came to the attention of the Labour politician Tony Benn, who as Anthony Wedgwood Benn was postmaster general in Harold Wilson’s first government. Benn reprinted the manifesto in a column in the Guardian, adding: “The responsibility for the waste of talent which they have denounced is one we must all share. The evidence for it is all around us in the ugliness with which we have to live. It could so easily be replaced if only we consciously decided as a community to engage some of the skill which now goes into the frills of an affluent society.”
The manifesto was reprinted in a couple of magazines towards the end of the century, and a group of writers and designers produced an updated First Things First Manifesto 2000 for publication in several journals for the start of the new one. Art school students were drawn to its polemical and questioning tone, and Ken enjoyed a newfound status as a star turn in colleges and lecture theatres around the world. His lectures were irreverent and provocative.
Neither dully academic nor self-congratulatory, he charmed his audience with a mixture of playful theatrics and critical reflection.
Born in Southampton, Ken was the son of Arthur Garland, a commercial traveller in printed stationery, and his wife, Gwendoline (nee Veale). When he was five the family moved to Barnstaple, Devon. Ken’s announcement that he intended to study art prompted a visit to his father’s firm’s design department. But this glimpse into the world of commercial design did not impress Ken: he wanted to be an artist.
In 1945 he enrolled at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, doing what he called a “rather lowbrow two-year course called commercial design”. On completing it in 1947, Ken embarked on two years of national service in the Parachute Regiment. In February 1948 his battalion was sent to Lübeck, on the north coast of Germany, and the following year he made a short visit to Berlin during the final months of its blockade. After the army, he spent two years studying graphic design at the Sir John Cass College, London, and then transferred to Central.
It was there that Ken met the artist Wanda Wistrich, who had moved from Kraków, Poland, to London when she was 14. They married in 1954. Wanda taught at Central and later became headteacher at Thomas Buxton junior school, Tower Hamlets, east London. In 2012, Wanda and Ken celebrated 60 years since their first meeting by holding a joint exhibition of their work in Camden Town.
Long after he stopped being a designer for hire, Ken travelled extensively, amassing a portfolio of photographs that he published under his own imprint, Pudkin Books. At the end of 2011 he was a regular visitor to the Occupy London site outside St Paul’s Cathedral, where he talked to protesters and studiously recorded the many handmade signs on view.
I got to know Ken through writing the book Ken Garland: Structure and Substance (2012), and we became friends.
A hugely popular figure, Ken was generous with the attention he gave to younger designers, and indeed anyone he met or who got in touch with him.
He is survived by Wanda, his children, Ruth and Ben, granddaughter, Katie, and grandsons Simon and Daniel.
