For many of us, Alan Fletcher was always part of the graphic landscape, fully formed and brilliant. So it’s hard to imagine him as a twenty-something trying to find a creative identity in the ravages of post-war London: a grim, rationed, fog-laden, gloomy place. In 1950, he wove his way through a series of art schools, culminating in the prestigious Central School of Arts and Crafts. Here, he found like-minded students: Derek Birdsall, Terence Conran, Colin Forbes and Theo Crosby. This little gang had a plethora of inspirational tutors at their disposal, including Paul Hogarth, Victor Pasmore, Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, and many more. The place was bubbling with experimentation, optimism, and a vision for a future Britain.
That ethos continued later when Alan was awarded a place at The Royal College of Art, another hothouse of surfacing talent, including Len Deighton, Dennis Bailey, David Gentleman, Joe Tilson and Peter Blake. While there, he secured an exchange scholarship to the Yale School of Art and Design in the United States.
In 1956, sporting a full head of hair and with his young wife, Paola, on his arm, Alan set sail for the land of plenty, bustling with vibrant colour and unapologetic energy. It was a revelation and something he embraced with open arms. At Yale, he was again blessed with tutors of exceptional talent, among them Paul Rand, Bradbury Thompson and Josef Albers. While in the States, Alan kept in touch with Colin Forbes and was sad to discover that he was having a depressing time in London. “Come over, you’ll love it”, suggested Alan. Forbes did just that and was picked up from the airport by Alan and Paola in a classic open-top roadster. They spent the entire evening driving around the dramatic skyscraper canyons of Manhattan. Forbes camped out in Fletcher’s apartment, and the stay did the trick: when Forbes departed back to London, there was a definite spring in his step, and a seed had been planted in his mind that would blossom two decades later.
Before leaving America, Alan made a point of zooming around New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, making many lifelong friends along the way while freelancing for some of the most creative art directors of the time, including Saul Bass and Leo Lionni.
His time in America gave him not only a professional edge but also the confidence to return to London.
Alan’s journey back home from New York actually went via Venezuela (an ill-judged fantasy, but that’s another story) and then on to Italy with Paola. While there, he worked for Pirelli in Milan. When he finally returned to London, he still held the memory of his exhilarating time in the States, but that image was abruptly brought back down to earth. London was even more depressing than when he’d left three years earlier. Teenagers looked like their parents, apart from the odd Teddy Boy. There was little design work to be had. The industry was still termed ‘commercial art’, and what good stuff there was went to the established guard of the day: Milner Grey, Henrion, Misha Black, Abram Games et al. Alan longed to be back in the noise and neon of New York, where everything was big and blowsy, and work was plentiful and well-paid. Thanks to the connections he had made in New York, he’d secured a three-day-a-week consultancy for Time and Life in London, along with work from Pirelli and a one-day-a-week teaching post at Central School, thanks to Colin Forbes, who was head of graphics. Alan rented a studio space in Colin’s flat. With the security of some income from his two clients, he began to work.
During the tail end of Alan’s time in New York, he’d made a point of contacting the city’s creative set. He’d been keen to seek out Bob Gill, a young ‘hot’ designer at the time. But it never happened. Back in London, he settled into a daily routine in his basement studio at Forbes’s flat. One evening, his phone rang: “Hello Alan, it’s Bob Gill. I’m in London. Can we meet?” The die was being cast for the beginning of something very special.
Alan introduced Bob Gill to Colin Forbes. They all seemed to get along swimmingly, admiring one another’s work. Discussions of getting together formally became a regular talking point, which, as Alan recalled, was endless. It was only after some clairvoyant advice given to Gill in a caravan that they finally agreed to join forces. Work was divided up, and they found a nice little space thanks to Gill, who persuaded an ad agency he’d been involved with to bankroll the purchase of a small house in a mews just off Baker Street. A year passed while the property was being renovated, and on April Fools’ Day 1962, the Fletcher/Forbes/Gill doors were opened on what was to become a devastating force in British graphics.
At first, it was just the three of them, all very hands-on, plus a receptionist and her dog. With not enough work to occupy all of them, they would often spend time in nearby cafés bitching about London and philosophising about design while puffing away on Gauloises and downing copious amounts of coffee.
What little work they had came from Time and Life, Pirelli and Penguin Books. With the latter client, they’d argue over who was to design the cover, for the handsome fee of £30 (around £830 in today’s money).
One day, Alan recalled returning from lunch to discover their receptionist painting her fingernails. Perturbed by this lack of conscientiousness, there were huddled discussions and talks of firing, but Alan had a better idea. He told her they would promote her and that she would now be the receptionist and bookkeeper. It worked. The nail varnish never reappeared.
The idea of passing on their wisdom in book form was established with A Sign Systems Manual, Identity Kits, and Graphic Design: Visual Comparisons, and it was the beginning of many to follow. And up popped a new partner in the shape of Theo Crosby.
The idea of bringing Crosby into the fold came from Forbes, which felt that involvement in buildings and interiors would give them greater design possibilities. Alan could see the potential of this and agreed. Gill was not so sure but went along with it anyway. But in a short space of time, Gill’s patience wore thin. He found the whole protracted world of architecture infuriating, preferring the immediacy of graphics. As a hot-headed and opinionated character, he was always destined to work under his own remit, and so, three short years after joining, one of the key figures in Britain’s most influential graphics trio packed his portfolio and left. Eventually, the new, wider design offer did lead to bigger and higher profile clients, with the new trio dealing with decision-makers at the top of the pile, rather than underlings. Shell, Arthur Andersen, Reuters and Canard all became significant clients. They settled in to build on their dream.
The early 1970s saw significant growth, and the three partners now had teams of assistants and often collaborated with external, established designers. As with many companies of a certain size, talk of expansion arises. They had been in conversation with the product designer Kenneth Grange and one of their own associate designers, Mervyn Kurlansky, about formalising a new partnership.
Alan was forever delving into books for pearls of wisdom and witty quotations. And the story goes he’d been reading a book on witchcraft and became intrigued by the name ‘Pentagram’: a five-pointed star. Although none of the others liked it much, the name stuck, and so Pentagram was born. The five partners established a new business structure. Everyone would receive the same salary, regardless of their individual workflow; everyone would be responsible for their own profit centres, and everyone would contribute to a communal fund for rent, administration costs, and special projects. This mechanism would serve the partnership well for many years to come. By the late 1970s, Pentagram was installed in a canal-side building overlooking Paddington Station, described by Alan as: “One of the best views of East Germany in London”. The studio had an air of calm professionalism, with an endless array of strutting, youthful assistants sporting denim flares, Fair Isle jumpers, and the bubble hairdos of the period. Lunchtime was a communal affair set out on long tables below a wall of enamelled Victorian advertising signs. Meanwhile, Alan immersed himself in ever-larger projects. One project for the Commercial Bank of Kuwait involved him in every aspect of the bank’s visual manifestation: just what he’d always dreamed of. In 1978, Colin Forbes – still with the memory of his tour of Manhattan with the Fletchers back in ’58 – set off like Columbus to the Americas to set up Pentagram New York. And so began Pentagram’s tentative global reach.
The 1980s were a solid period for Alan, who built on his substantial experience in handling major identities and signing projects. He produced a sumptuous book and the signing programme for the then-shiny-new Lloyds of London HQ. Alan also enhanced the IBM Paris offices with new signage and a range of posters and produced the classic V&A identity, which is still going strong. By this time, more partners were embedded in the Pentagram mix, among them graphic designers John McConnell and David Hillman, and a new office was opened in San Francisco. The rich mix of egos and the aromas from Montecristo cigars and Gauloises permeated the new HQ building in Notting Hill. By that time, the design world was changing. A proliferation of new design consultancies appeared, many of whose personnel had passed through Pentagram. These were highly creative and well-organised consultancies, and with them came the digital world, which was about to transform the industry. For the first time, Pentagram found itself in competition with this new breed. And the haphazard economic climate of the time was a worrying factor for everyone.
By this time, Alan had been in the design business for almost four decades. He was bored with corporate clients and disillusioned with the daily complexities of Pentagram. He had begun taking on projects just feed the crew. He wanted out. He wanted more time to play in the studio rather than worry about it.
In 1992, he walked the half-mile journey from Pentagram to his home in Notting Hill Gate. He never went back, leaving behind 25 partners over his period there. But there was one partner he didn’t leave: his wife and life partner, Paola.
From 1992, you’d find Alan sitting in his well-worn Eames office chair amidst an array of his colourful work set out in his pristine, white-walled, immaculate mews studio. Here, he unleashed a torrent of highly personal work. For a while, he virtually abandoned conventional typesetting in favour of his own scratchy handwriting, along with simple, primary-coloured paper. He set about amusing himself, rather than others. He also decided that he would say ‘no’ to uninteresting work and people for the rest of his life. He also embarked on two highly successful books: Beware Wet Paint and The Art of Looking Sideways. Around that time, I interviewed Alan for a magazine and was taken by a menagerie of highly coloured animals made from loo rolls, card, cork and string displayed in his studio. He’d actually made them for his grandson, Tobia, to amuse him while on holiday. But Tobia never got to play with them because Alan liked them so much. They ended up in the 2001 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
His final years saw him as busy as ever: consultant art director of Phaidon Press; Domus magazine cover designer; and creative advisor to Novartis, a pharmaceutical conglomerate, for their new research and resource complex in Basel. The latter was an ambitious project that would have taken Alan 30 years to complete. 'I’ll be 101 by then,' he told me dryly.
Well, he never reached that grand old age. On 21 September 2006, he left us, far too early. The image of him that stays in my mind is of Alan on his hands and knees in the gutter, surreptitiously cutting out a choice piece of discarded cardboard to take back to his creative lair to add to one of his many collage pieces.
Alan Fletcher leaves behind an astonishing body of work: work that helped form the foundation of 20th-century British graphics.
© 2026 Mike Dempsey
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