Famous Graphic Designers: Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer (1924-2002), one of many famous graphic designers from London UK, was a student of the Central School of Arts and Crafts in the early 1950s. He was the author of the ground breaking ‘Design in Business Printing’ (1952) and the founder of ‘Typographica’ (1949-67), the highly popular and extremely influential publication that he edited and designed throughout its eighteen-year life.

Talking about how he began his graphic design career, Spencer said that he became passionately interested in printing at the age of twelve, having no idea of what sparked it off. During the early years of the war, in his mid-teens his interest in printing turned to more towards painting and drawing. He volunteered in the British Air Force, but before he was called up he got a job with the advertising agent Cecil B Notley. At the age of seventeen and a half, Spencer said “I realised that my knowledge of type was really quite an asset”.

After the Air Force, he met Leon French and William Morgan. They were trained compositors who had worked as typographical designers at the Ministry of Information during the war, and had now formed a small group called London Typographical Designers of which he joined them.

LTD designed a lot of technical catalogues, brochures and a certain amount of press advertising. It was all fairly prestigious print design work and some of the publications were highly complex. Sometime later something happened which made it seem possible for him to break away. Herbert was approached by the director of the Linguists’ Club in Grosvenor Place to redesign all their printed material, including a monthly magazine.

In a conversation with Alan Fletcher another one of London’s famous graphic designers, Fletcher describes an invitation designed by Max Huber from the early 1950s, that really impressed Fletcher as a student. Fletcher asks of Herbert “is there a similar piece of typographic work which sticks in your mind?”

Spencer describes the work that influenced him as a young graphic designer, “During the early 1940s I remember being struck by some of Tschichold’s work reproduced in Robert Harling’s excellent prewar journal Typography, of which, sadly, only eight issues appeared. In particular I remember an advertisement he had designed for Paul Graupe “Auktion 105”. Just after the war, when I began to get really seriously interested in typography, I remember also being much impressed by Max Bill’s 1947 Allianz catalogue cover for the Kunsthaus Zurich.

He goes on to sight two books which he bought when he was about sixteen which had a great influence on his ideas. Vincent Steer’s massive volume on typography and the other being Alfred Barr’s Museum of Modern Art book called Cubism and Abstract Art, which had been published some years earlier in 1936. These pieces were in keeping with what Spencer felt attracted him in design: Architecture, Painting and Sculpture in a broader perspective and made Spencer comprehend the many movements and ideas that were current at the time.

Upon reflection Fletcher says he can focus on certain contemporary designers who have influenced his own attitudes to typography, namely Paul Rand. Fletcher ask Spencer to tell him something about similar influences on his career?

Spencer describes his early twenties where he found the work being done by Sandberg in Holland, Pierre Faucheux in France and Max Huber in Italy very stimulating, particularly in the use of different materials which seemed to give some of their work a three-dimensional quality. Spencer was also moved by the prints of H N Werkman, the Dutch printer-painter who had been executed on almost the last day of the German occupation of Holland. Werkman is certainly someone he would strongly advise any student to look at seriously and enjoy. Indeed, he and most of the other twentieth-century designers I consider important are included in my book Pioneers of Modern Typography.

When asked if there was any single piece of typography he had done of which he felt particularly fond of, Spencer says “Of my various publications I think Pioneers is perhaps the one of most lasting value, although The Visible Word and the much earlier Design in Business Printing (which was the result of my teaching experience at the Central School) were important at the time they were published. But it is certainly Typographica for which I have the deepest affection and for which, perhaps, I shall be best remembered.”

Fletcher asks: “I am regularly surprised at most design students’ ignorance, even lack of curiosity, of the major influences in the field in which they profess to be studying. What is your reaction to this comment as professor at the Royal College of Art?” Spencer goes on to confirm Fletcher’s proposition; he says “What you say is sadly true. I am sometimes depressed when interviewing candidates for the College, not only by their ignorance of their chosen subject, but also their uncritical attitude and general lack of interest in the cultural life of their time”.

Fletcher goes on to ask about what criteria he has in mind when suggesting certain work or publications which you feel a student could learn from. Spencer says “The important thing in typographic design is of course the content, and the designer is, or should be, the bridge between the author and the reader. This does not mean that typography should be dull or invisible. But it does mean that the bridge should not peter out halfway across the ravine. A printed text is not just texture on the page: it is the vehicle for conveying information or the author’s ideas and emotions.”

“If you were to produce and exhibition of only ten pieces, which would they be and why?” In response Spencer says “Although many of my commissions gave me enormous pleasure at the time, there are few pieces of work (other than Typographica) for which I feel particularly enthusiastic in the long term, and I certainly would not consider putting on an exhibition of only ten pieces, as you suggest. As I explained in an interview published in the Designer (the SIA journal), I am really against the idea of treating typography as a means for creating paper monuments.”

Interview extracts from AGI Essays on Design 1 Booth-Clibborn Editions.