Alan Fletcher (graphic designer)
Alan Gerard Fletcher (27 September 1931 – 21 September 2006) was a British graphic designer. In his obituary, he was described by The Daily Telegraph as "the most highly regarded graphic designer of his generation, and probably one of the most prolific". Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Fletcher moved to England at age five, and studied at four art schools: Hammersmith School of Art, Central School of Art, Royal College of Art (1953–1956) and lastly Yale School of Art and Architecture at Yale University in 1956. Early life Fletcher was born in Nairobi, where his father was a civil servant. When his father was terminally ill he returned to England at the age of five with the rest of his family. He lived with his grandparents in Shepherd's Bush in West London, before being evacuated in 1939 to Christ's Hospital in Horsham. He studied at the Hammersmith School of Art from 1949, then at the Central School of Art, where he studied under noted typographer Anthony Froshaug and befriended Colin Forbes, Terence Conran, David Hicks, Peter Firmin, Theo Crosby, Derek Birdsall and Ken Garland. After a year teaching English at Berlitz Language School in Barcelona, he returned to London to study at the Royal College of Art from 1953 to 1956, where he met Peter Blake, Joe Tilson, Len Deighton, Denis Bailey, David Gentleman and Dick Smith. He married Paola Biagi, an Italian national, in 1956 (they met with a heated discussion about if orange and pink were a good or bad colour pair). He then took up a scholarship to study at the Yale School of Art and Architecture at Yale University, under Alvin Eisenman, Norman Ives, Herbert Matter, Bradbury Thompson, Josef Albers and Paul Rand. He visited Robert Brownjohn, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar in New York, became friends with Bob Gill, and was commissioned by Leo Lionni to design a cover for Fortune magazine in 1958. After a visit to Venezuela, he returned to London in 1959, having worked briefly for Saul Bass in Los Angeles and Pirelli in Milan. Professional career He founded a design firm called 'Fletcher/Forbes/Gill' with Colin Forbes and Bob Gill in 1962. An early product was their 1963 book Graphic Design: A Visual Comparison in John Lewis's Studio Paperbacks series. Clients included Pirelli, Cunard, Penguin Books and Olivetti. Gill left the partnership in 1965 and was replaced by Theo Crosby, so the firm became Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes. Two new partners joined, and the partnership evolved into Pentagram in 1972, with Forbes, Crosby, Kenneth Grange and Mervyn Kurlansky, with clients including Lloyd's of London and Daimler Benz. Much of his work is still in use: a logo for Reuters made up of 84 dots, which he created in 1965, was retired in 1992, but his 1989 "V&A" logo for Victoria and Albert Museum, and his "IoD" logo for the Institute of Directors remain in use. In last years he designed the logo for the Italian School of Architecture "Facolta' di Architettura di Alghero", (University of Sassari).