Show & Tell: Alan Fletcher graphic design studio

This is a transcript of one of our weekly, studio show-and-tells.

Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes and Bob Gill were the founders of Fletcher Forbes and Gill. They were one of the first pure graphic design agencies in London in the '60s and they gradually evolved into one of the biggest and best agencies in the world, Pentagram.

Fletcher, Forbes, and Gill were some of the first graphic designers to make a serious impact in the UK. The first kind of rock star graphic designers, really. They were incredibly successful in the '60s. They were very cool, trendy young guys around town, photographed by David Bailey, kind of Michael Caine, Terrance Stamp, Beatles vibes... But designers!

After a few years, Bob Gill went back to America, and Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes became founding partners of Pentagram. They stayed in the same area of Notting Hill throughout. Alan Fletcher's house was around the corner and had these amazing cast-iron alphabet gates. This image is of Alan's home studio, where he continued to work as a freelancer, wrote his own books and did a lot of illustration. This poster of his studio is from a Design Museum retrospective from about 20 years ago.

I always really liked the look of it as an aspirational place to work, really. I just love the look of the place. And I think what I love about it is that the graphic design of the '60s was much closer to art; you can see that in his studio. I think it lived in a much closer proximity to the creative arts generally than it did to business, even though it was certainly a business discipline. I think these pictures really reflect that. This is a person who is interested in stuff. And interested in ephemera. He used to make all of these weird sculptures.

It’s a really nicely shot thing because it shows you about the life of that person. He made his own door system with a feather duster that would rub against the wind chimes when the door opened because people would walk into his studio and he wanted to hear them.

There's something about being in that space that there is a sense of the graphic design business but actually it's a room filled with pencils and pens and sculptures and weird little things he's collected. He had like these big frames full of pencil ends that ended up tiny and bitten off that were beautiful as multicoloured pieces of art. Really lovely.

Image sources: Design Museum, The Prink Arkive