At the time”, Marber recalls, “Penguin cover design was in a muddle drifting from one design to another, diluting Penguin Books’ identity, reputation and goodwill. I came to the conclusion that the cover design must unite the titles in the Penguin Crime series. This would be achieved by visual uniformity of all or some of the components that make up a cover. A grid will divide the cover into area of white and green, determine the typography and the placing of type and picture, and is particularly important when artwork is commissioned from diverse illustrators/designers whose styles differ.” The new improved version of Common Worship, the services and prayers for the Church of England, designed by Derek Birdsall Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian In 1949 Tschichold returned to Switzerland after three highly productive years in which he had defined an intellectually rigorous and inspiring visual language for Penguin, ensuring that ‘its books, produced as cheaply as possible in millions for the millions, are every bit as well set and designed as the most expensive in the country’. His successor, the typographer Hans Schmoller (1916-1985) had a rich knowledge of type and unerring eye for detail, but was less radical in his approach and tended to refine Tschichold’s templates rather than inventing his own. Schmoller’s design for the 1950s architectural series, The Buildings of England written by the historian Nikolaus Pevsner, was modelled closely on Tschichold’s templates. However he did change the Penguin grid from horizontal to vertical in 1951 for Penguin fiction covers. The vertical grid had been devised at Tschichold’s behest by the designer Erik Ellegaard Frederiksen, but was not adopted until Schmoller had modified it. The result was the division of the cover into three vertical stripes, which allowed enough space for illustration while maintaining the tri-partite division and the original 1930s colour coding so strongly associated with Penguin. GTF, or Graphic Thought Facility, is a practice of three principal designers – Paul Neale, Andy Stevens and Huw Morgan – who share a collective spirit.

On our graduation Derek said, "When I was your age I was already doing this!" and handed me the book 17 Graphic Designers London. It showcased all the great and good of the 60s British designers, just as they were getting going. I spent a long time looking through it, and I'm still inspired when I read it now.Derek told me how they had so much freedom and could get away with something as long as it was a great idea.In 1964 Birdsall moved to Covent Garden and in 1967 joined forces with Forsyth, who had left Pirelli to start a hybrid design consultancy that also handled advertising, called Omnific. Sam Buxton’s works involve advanced materials and modern technology which is manifested on his foldable sculptures of electroluminesentfurniture.

But Pegasus really took flight with the arrival in 1973 of editor Vitiello, a writer and former Fulbright scholar who had worked in public television for six years. Vitiello remained at the helm until the final issue, Pegasus no. 29, ‘Performance’, in 1985. Birdsall and Vitiello value their collaboration highly: nearly 30 years later, they recall the experience as one of the best of their careers. ‘I learned what a good editor was,’ says Birdsall. ‘We worked very closely on this and I haven’t had a closer relationship since.’A few designers have stood against the reduction to image. In Martens’ typography, we find the power and resonance of a deep commitment to material. His preference is for materials that are a bit rough, not too perfect; if they wear visibly through use, well, that is what happens in life. You will not find any heavy varnishing on his covers, unless, as with Oase 33, it is there as an ironic comment on that issue’s special them: the metropolis. Take the simplest case, of a single sheet of paper for a letterheading. Printing some of the text on the reverse side, so it shows through to the front, provides another means of coding information as well as demonstrating that the sheet is a three-dimensional thing in the world. To supplement his freelance work, Birdsall began lecturing in the history of typography at the London College of Printing. In 1960 he joined forces with three other designers: George Daulby, Peter Wildbur and George Mayhew, a designer who had done a lot of work for Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop company. The team, named BDMW Associates (acronyms were new and progressive in those days), took up residence in a Bloomsbury loft. ‘This was groundbreaking stuff,’ says Birdsall. ‘Apart from Design Research Unit, who were the gods, few design groups existed.’ Modesty forbids an answer from Martens, so I shall try an explanation. The mannerisms are apparent, but they do not stay still: the work develops, responds appropriately to each new task, observes and accepts the constraints of the job. There is no style, only an approach and an attitude: unapologetic intelligence and unbeatable moral integrity. Drive hard for content and for the real object, refuse the delusions of the image: that is the lesson this work offers. It will not be accepted into the culture of empty designerism, of slide shows on the international conference circuit, because in its spirit and in every detail it resists that culture. They sold the business and set up a foundation whose main project is engaging young people with design. John and Frances are making a bigger impact on the way design is understood than any other designer in Britain.

When Birdsall and Forsyth fell out at the end of the 1960s, Birdsall handed over the Pirelli account to Forsyth. But there were other clients who would give him the creative freedom to remain at the leading edge of international graphic design. IBM commissioned him and remains a client today. Mobil Oil involved him in books and catalogues which were part of its programme of cultural sponsorship. When two Mobil executives left to join United Technologies, Birdsall found a rich new source of work, again in the field of arts sponsorship. Even today, were you to ask people to picture a Penguin book, many would describe the cover as two horizontal coloured bands of orange, or green, and the title and author’s name printed in the white centre panel. In other words the typographic Penguin cover design of 1935: the work of Edward Young. And yet it is more than half a century since Penguin dropped that simple, powerful brand in favour of illustration and full colour covers.This echoes precisely the dilemma that Penguin found difficult to resolve for a considerable period. Jan Tschichold had first proposed a revised grid to accommodate illustration in the late 1940s. But it took a full twelve years for Penguin to embrace the inevitable and abandon the brand identity that instantly identified the imprint, and with it some of the implicit trust that had built up through war and peacetime. Birdsall’s output was growing and he was working for a range of prestigious clients. He was commissioned by Pirelli’s advertising manager Derek Forsyth to design its 1964 calendar. Fletcher, Forbes and Gill had produced it the previous year, with photography by Terence Donovan, in Hyde Park. Birdsall felt it should be shot somewhere more glamorous and with photographer Robert Freeman he set off to Majorca, setting the pattern for the increasingly lavish productions that were to follow. Eileen Gray struggled to be known as one of the most recognized and important architects in the field of furniture designs in the 20th century, and probably in many years to come. Her designs reflect Art Deco and modernism in general. Derek's first 'real' design job wasn't until the age of 23, for the printer Balding & Mansell where he designed a series of leaflets to accompany Opera records.I witnessed people’s reactions first hand, their interest piqued and the wrysmile as the penny dropped.‘I’d like to do more of this,’ I thought.” Terry Gilliam, interviewed by Paul Wardle, The Comics Journal, no. 182, November 1995, p.76. (Gilliam is currently unavailable for comment because he is finishing a new movie, The Brothers Grimm.) We're proud to be Northern. Each week we're bringing light to the heritage of the North's most prolific graphic designers and creatives. Birdsall enrolled at Wakefield College of Art in 1949 for a three-year foundation course. He won a scholarship to the Central School of Arts and Crafts where he studied under typography tutor Anthony Froshaug in a department called Book Production and Commercial Design. ‘The inference was that good book production naturally included design,’ says Birdsall, ‘Graphic design, of course, is a curiously meaningless term. I toyed with the idea of renaming the graphic design course at the Royal College of Art, “Book Production and Commercial Design” when I was a professor there in the 1980s.’ Birdsall was also tutored at the Central School by the artist Richard Hamilton, then resident in the industrial design department. Terence Conran and Colin Forbes had just left; Eduardo Paolozzi and many other key figures were contemporaries. ‘This is a chapel of good taste,’ intoned head of department Jesse Collins when the occasion demanded. ‘Out there are the barbarians.’

Not a great start, but I got the job… just. I’d put that down to being in the right place at the right time.” He spent the best part of his service armed with nothing more than mapping pens, Indian ink and tracing paper, producing detailed drawings for three army depots and, in the process, learning an awful lot. MLA style: "Derek Birdsall. Notes on Book Design.." The Free Library. 2005 Bibliographical Society of Canada 27 Nov. 2023 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Derek+Birdsall.+Notes+on+Book+Design.-a0134312976 The Wakefield authorities, on finding out his age, insisted he continue in education for another 3 years, which is when he began to dabble in letterpress and found a job manufacturing cards for a local business. My first job was at Saatchi & Saatchi Design. I very nearly didn’t get my foot in the door, let alone feet under the table, having made a terrible gaffe that could have cost me the first interview.How to group text and images in ways that make sense? What size of type? How much space between the words, between the lines? What length of line? Birdsall showed an early ability to draw and one of his strongest childhood recollections is of stationery shops full of pens and piles of trimmed paper. His grandfather was a clerk in the local chemical works, a respected figure who was an expert on writing instruments and who would use an agate (a semi-precious stone) to make up to ten perfect carbon copies of documents.