In three turbulent years, from 1968–71, the illustration and design supergroup Bentley / Farrell / Burnett helped to define the look of the time.

It is the summer of 1968, and a young woman called Valerie Watson is rushing to an interview. Just 21 and a recent graduate of Harrow School of Art, she had noticed a small ad – for a paste-up artist-come-general assistant – in the evening paper. Hurrying through the entrance arch to London Mews, Paddington, she arrives at number 17 and is confronted by large double doors painted bright canary yellow. As she enters, the orchestral crescendo from The Beatles’ A Day In The Life blasts from behind a screen.

Three young men are sitting at drawing desks: two to the right, one to the left. Framed on the back wall is a large poster of the classic 1950s Start-rite shoe advertisement featuring two young children walking down a tree-lined avenue with the slogan: ‘Children’s shoes have far to go!’.

The trio comprises Peter Bentley, Michael Farrell and Stewart Burnett. They have been together as a unit for a matter of months and are now in need of their first assistant. After an extremely short interview, Watson is offered the job.She quickly realises that she will not be doing much assisting, apart from covering finished artwork, delivering to clients and getting in sandwiches. But she loves the laid-back atmosphere, the endless music and is in awe of the collective talent: the three artists huddled over their drawing boards, obsessing with detail, all very possessive of their work. Watson stays with them for two of their three years in existence. BFB will make a huge impact on the British design scene, but they become a graphic shooting star – burning brightly, then fragmenting and fading away.

Early days

Bentley and Burnett had both attended Bradford College in the late 1950s, where they studied three-dimensional design, textiles and commercial art, as it was then called. On graduation in 1960, they went their separate ways. Burnett was at the Royal College of Art for a while but dropped out due to lack of money, and found his way into the world of product and exhibition design. Meanwhile, Bentley spent three years away from the UK, in Canada and the United States. On his return in 1966, he met up with Burnett again, and they set off for a three-month sojourn in the south of France. Back in London, they worked together and eventually formed Bentley/Burnett. An early project was for Bosies, a fashion boutique near Savile Row; they designed the interior and graphic identity. A poster later earned them a D&AD Silver Award.

Michael Farrell was slightly younger and self-taught, and for a time he was a messenger at the advertising agency Collett Dickenson and Pearce. At CDP he met Michael Wade, with whom he formed a short-lived partnership called Farrell/Wade. Farrell ran into Bentley and Burnett, whom he had met a few years earlier, and after a lively discussion about the state of British graphics, Farrell became the third partner. Bentley / Farrell / Burnett (BFB) was born.

This was a remarkable time: David Bailey and Terence Donovan were using lightweight 35mm SLR cameras to shoot fashion on the streets. Binder, Edwards & Vaughan were painting psychedelic shop-front murals and car bodies for clients including The Beatles, Eric Clapton and The Kinks. Alan Aldridge was shaking up Penguin Books. Fashion, art, cinema and music were in flux. In 1966, Time magazine described this heady creative mix as ‘Swinging London’.

When a travelling exhibition of the work of New York-based Push Pin Studios arrived in London, London’s graphic designers and illustrators flocked to see it. I was one of them – it was a revelation. The sheer inventiveness was staggering in comparison to the sedate Modernism de rigueur in Britain at the time. Everyone left that exhibition at Reed House on Piccadilly super-charged with creative energy and with change in their hearts. The influence of Push Pin ran through British graphics like a virus: the chasm between the old, ranged-left brigade and the new, grid-liberated guard widened. Designer-illustrators such as John Gorham, Tony Meeuwissen, Michael English, George Hardie, Philip Castle, Adrian George, Alan Cracknell, Justin Todd and Aldridge saw their stock rise. As the new kids on the block, BFB soon joined this elite arena.

Though equally credited on BFB projects, the three men worked separately for their own clients, but split their income equally. They shared the same passion for craft and physically produced their own artworks, often extremely intricate and colourful. The ‘less is more’ Swiss-inspired design of the time was out, and ‘more is more’ was definitely in.

Design meteorites

The last of the trio, Peter Bentley, freelanced and continued to design and illustrate for Penguin Books. Then, in 1974, he was invited to share space at NTA, the studio founded by Nicholas Thirkell, who had left the previous year to spend time in India. At the time, it was based in Earlham Street in Covent Garden. Here, Bentley briefly worked alongside the formidable talents of George Hardie (see Eye 58), Bush Hollyhead, Malcolm Harrison and Bob Lawrie.

BFB were graphic design meteorites, burning brightly for a short time. But they left behind a remarkable, head-turning body of work, echoes of which are now surfacing in generations of designer-illustrators for whom the late 1960s is a distant dream.

First published in Eye no. 93 vol. 24, 2017

If you don’t know Eye magazine and are in the creative world, you should. It’s informative, surprising and beautiful.

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That’s me above, looking far more serious than I usually feel. And for those who don’t know me, prepare yourselves: this post is gloriously, unashamedly about me. It’s the story of how I stumbled into graphic design and ended up in a decades-long love affair with it, one that refuses to fade, no matter what the calendar insists.

I’m now in my 80s (apparently), though in my head I’m still hovering around 34, usually until I try to get up from a low chair. I’ve been lucky enough to live through the full sweep of creative history: from the reassuring hands-on analogue world, into the blinking neon of digital, and now into the age of AI, which seems determined to move into every room of the house whether invited or not.

Some of you will know that I host the podcast RDInsight, which I started back in 2006; positively prehistoric by internet standards, and it’s still trundling along nicely. I’ve chatted with more than 90 Royal Designers for Industry (RDI), a title bestowed by the RSA on designers who’ve genuinely shaped the world around us.

But in 2022, for the 60th episode, the unthinkable happened: I was the one in the hot seat. For the first time, I had to talk about my life and my work, and it was far more complex than I’d imagined. Safe to say, I was somewhat relieved to grab the microphone back afterwards.

If you fancy a listen, here’s the link: 

https://royaldesignersforindustry.org/resources/rdinsights

Just scroll down, and keep going, until you see my photo and click on the dot.

Before you wander off, here’s a peek at just two of the many clients I was fortunate enough to work with and create for during my thirty years at CDT:

English National Opera (ENO) and the London Chamber Orchestra (LCO).

I adored working with both. Here’s a taste of what we created together, all images shown are mostly from the 1990s decade

 A post from 2015, rescued from my old blog, about the enduring loyalty of a faithful old friend.

In November 2013, I attended the presentation of the Royal Designers for Industry awards. These awards, from London’s Royal Society of Arts, were initiated in 1936 to recognise the contribution that designers make to society and include among their early recipients Eric Gill (1936), Edward McKnight Kauffer (1936), Raymond Loewy (1939) and Susie Cooper (1940). Among the nine designers being honoured in 2013 was Tony Meeuwissen, a man who has spent his entire creative life dedicated to the exacting hand-crafted execution of stunningly original artwork. There is nobody quite like him, and he is still the only designer / illustrator to have won two D&AD Gold Awards in the organisation’s history.

Anthony Peter Meeuwissen was born in Mayday Hospital, Croydon, in 1938, to his eighteen-year-old mother. The unusual surname (pronounced Maywissen) is from his Dutch grandfather, an engineer, a career that Meeuwissen’s father also followed. When Meeuwissen was young, his mother would read aloud nursery rhymes, classic fairy tales and children’s books from the library. He recalls Andersen, Grimm, Babar the Elephant and Struwwelpeter in particular. Aged twelve, he was awarded a place at a grammar school in Egham, but drawing was his real passion, and at sixteen he left school to take up an apprenticeship at Theatre Publicity (later to be absorbed into Rank Screen Services), which was responsible for the advertisements, mostly static slides, between feature films.

At Rank, Meeuwissen worked in both the art and layout departments for six years. Here, he learned to use gouache paints, discovered the beauty of typefaces, and helped develop new graphic ideas. About the same time, he wrote to Gerard Hoffnung, an artist and musician whose cartoons on musical themes were popular in Britain in the 1950s and whose work Meeuwissen greatly admired, having seen it in Lilliput and Punch magazines. Hoffnung replied and invited him to visit his home in Hampstead Garden Suburb, where he was generous with his time and advice, giving Meeuwissen tips on art, books and music. Meeuwissen also became interested in various philosophical movements and individuals, including George Gurdjieff (1866-1949), an influential spiritual teacher of Eastern esotericism.

The apprenticeship at Rank equipped Meeuwissen with basic commercial art skills, and he moved on to a variety of small studios and agencies, ending up in 1965 at Gerald Green Associates (GGA), which was just around the corner from über-trendy Carnaby Street during the height of the Swinging Sixties. It was an agency producing creative ideas for many London advertising agencies, and here Meeuwissen came under the influence of Al Vandenberg, an inspiring creative director and a brilliant reportage photographer. Meeuwissen describes Vandenberg as his only teacher, and he absorbed all he had to say. Vandenberg helped guide Meeuwissen to the next stage of his career by suggesting he visit Michael Wolff at Wolff Olins. Recognising Meeuwissen’s potential, Wolff offered him a job. However, Meeuwissen did not want to sever his connections with GGA completely, so he suggested working alternate weeks at Wolff Olins.

It was through Vandenberg that Meeuwissen was introduced to Michael Cooper, a man at the heart of the 1960s pop scene. He was not only responsible for photographing the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but was also instrumental in the cover’s overall concept. In 1967, Meeuwissen was commissioned by Cooper to create a border for The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request. He painted a psychedelic landscape embracing the four elements of earth, water, air and fire, which appeared on the back cover.

Continuing his freelance quest, Meeuwissen visited Michael Rand, the legendary art director of The Sunday Times colour supplement, and David Pelham, the art director at Penguin Books after Alan Aldridge. Both Rand and Pelham offered Meeuwissen regular work, and so began a 45-year freelance journey.

The individuality of Meeuwissen’s work quickly came to the notice of David Driver, who, in the late 1960s, was the art director of BOAC’s inflight magazine Welcome Aboard. It was a gem of a publication and quickly became the showcase for several illustrators and photographers. Over the coming years, Driver would graduate to the art directorship of Radio Times, and Meeuwissen would become a regular contributor. Another supporter was the designer John Gorham, a man of considerable talent in his own right and a collector of creative collaborators. 

If John thought your work was good, then your work was good.

With a stable band of loyal clients, Meeuwissen soon settled into a mix of commissions from a variety of sources, including editors, publishers and record industry personnel. In 1971, he moved away from the bustle of London to more tranquil surroundings in Wales, together with his first wife and two children, Cate and Jessica. And by 1972, he was in great demand. He had thirteen pieces of work in the D&AD Annual that year and was working for Island Records, Penguin Books, Lloyds Bank, Transatlantic Records, Music Sales, BBC Publications and Kinney Records, for which he won his first D&AD Gold Award. During his period in Wales, he produced his first complete children’s book, The Witch’s Hat. And in 1974, when I was the art director of Fontana Paperbacks, I also regularly commissioned him for book covers, including a C. S. Lewis series.

The Welsh idyll did not last, and in 1976 Meeuwissen’s marriage broke up. He returned to London and found an agent, Nicholas Dawe at Folio, who had already asked him to design their stationery. Dawe negotiated fees and handled Meeuwissen’s commissions, including one from Nicky Bird, the publisher at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Bird asked Meeuwissen to design a new deck of transformation playing cards. The challenge was irresistible, but the project stalled when Bird left the V&A.

When Meeuwissen wanted to continue with the project, his agent, Dawe, provided financial support for two years in return for a 50 per cent share in royalties and ownership of all the original illustrations. The Key to the Kingdom - a set of 53 transformation playing cards and an accompanying book, incorporated passages from nursery rhymes, and these were reflected in Meeuwissen’s ingenious card designs, which brought hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs to mind in a series of witty visual tricks. As well as traditional ditties, the cards featured work from authors such as Ogden Nash, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling and Hilaire Belloc.

To Meeuwissen’s consternation, the British publisher, Pavilion Books, wanted a prize idea to be woven into the book through a series of clues to be solved. The winner would receive £5000 and a golden key. A similar idea had been done with great success some years earlier with Kit Williams’s book Masquerade. Meeuwissen felt the prize device devalued his project’s integrity. Still, the design fraternity appreciated his efforts, and in 1993, awarded him his second D&AD Gold Award, as well as the W H Smith Illustration Award (now known as the V&A Illustration Award), with a prize of £4000.

Over the years, Meeuwissen has also produced three memorable sets of postage stamps for the Royal Mail. His first was a set of five for Christmas 1983 – one, depicting a dove and a blackbird, representing peace, won the Italian Francobollo d’Oro Award in 1984 for the world’s most beautiful stamp. His second, issued in 1991, was a stunning set of ten stamps based around the concept of ‘good luck’. These stamps formed a complete frieze design. The third set, produced in collaboration with graphic designer Howard Brown, was on the theme of weather. Four stamps were set inside a barometer dial cut into a circle, with the perforated stamps integral to the design. These postage stamps show Meeuwissen’s love of witty symbolism and visual games.

This can also be seen in an advertisement he produced for ICI Continental quilts in 1982, which shows a bedroom full of hatching ducklings. In the detritus around the room, you will find a tiny illustration of his book The Witch’s Hat, tucked away on the windowsill. Meeuwissen’s highly detailed work demonstrates an extraordinary level of craftsmanship. It is produced by hand, without the aid of technology. But the very nature of his pictures means that what might take an illustrator with a loose, immediate style two hours to produce could take Meeuwissen two weeks.

Today, Meeuwissen lives with his second wife, Marie, in Gloucestershire, and each day he prepares the gouache and watercolour paints he has always used and settles into another session of absorbed concentration on his latest project - one he has already been working on for a year. Entitled Purple Emperor (after the butterfly) and due for publication in 2015, it is a book of exotic animals set against whimsical verses. His 2002 book, Remarkable Animals (Frances Lincoln), has just been republished in a large-format hardback edition.

In an age where digital is king, Meeuwissen is an inspiration to anyone wishing to understand the hand-and-eye craft that is being lost. His illustrations continue to educate, illuminate and delight through their breathtaking beauty and unsurpassed skill. His contribution to society is worthy of celebration.

First published in Eye magazine No. 89, vol. 23, 2014.

If you don’t know Eye magazine and are in the creative world , you should; it's, informative/ terrific / surprising / beautiful.

Link: https://www.eyemagazine.com

This was my response to Grafik Magazine: Back in the black-and-white early 60s, I was an aimless, frustrated teenager trying to find an outlet for what I felt was an inner creative vocation, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. In between a series of mind-numbingly boring jobs, I plucked up the courage to join an evening class. It was called Calligraphy and Illuminated Lettering. Sounds archaic, I know, but it was in that very class, on many a dark winter’s evening, that I fell in love with letterforms.

Week after week, I practised until I knew every nook and cranny of a character. Later, I graduated to typefaces and had many affairs with those 26 little characters.

If I had to name one of my favourite typographical mistresses, I’d be torn between the Baskerville 169 italic ampersand (above) and the equivalent in Caslon Old Style. They are both so curvaceous and sensual; they always give me a thrill. I first used the 169 italic on a book cover in 1965.

The title was The Tree & The Flood. I sandwiched the little beauty between the strapping shafts of Schnellfetter Grotesk caps (a typeface I used to cut out from the pages of Twen magazine). The Baskerville 169 italic ampersand complemented those tall, robust figures perfectly.

In homage to these two eternal stunners, I created two T-shirts in 2008 using the Baskerville 169 italic ampersand, so that I could wear her close to my heart. And on the other, Schnellfetter Grotesk. Here they are, 17 years on, still in action.

For me, type has always been an emotional thing. I can be unexpectedly moved by the quiet poetry of letters arranged on a page, their weight, rhythm and the space they occupy. In these heated days of breakneck technological change, I find it heartening to picture William Caslon and John Baskerville in their workshops, patiently shaping the typefaces that would come to bear their names. They could never have imagined that, more than 270 years on, their handiwork would still be with us, used, loved, and every bit as fresh and meaningful as when it first left their hands.

With the exception of newspaper cartoonists, it’s becoming increasingly rare to see a truly hand-drawn black-and-white illustration on paper. Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing the work of many of my favourite handcrafted illustrators, some no longer with us, others still quietly working away, unplugged, with nothing more than a pen, black ink and a sheet of paper. In a world increasingly dominated by screens and digital shortcuts, this simple act of drawing feels more precious than ever. It’s something every child should be encouraged to do. Drawing is a universal form of communication, a way of thinking through the hand, and an extraordinary lifelong asset.