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Ken Garland studied design at the Central
School of Arts and Crafts in London in the early 1950s, and for
six years was art editor of Design magazine, official mouthpiece
of the Council of Industrial Design. In 1962, he set up his own
company, Ken Garland & Associates, and the same year began a fruitful
association (a "do-it-for-love consultancy," as he once put it)
with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was a committed campaigner
against the bomb, and his "Aldermaston to London Easter" poster,
with its huge, marching CND symbol, is an important piece of protest
graphics from the period. Always outspoken, in person and in print,
he was an active member of the socialist Labour Party and in 1964
he penned the original "First Things First Manifesto."
Latch on to the Affirmative
When preparing this presentation, British designer Ken Garland was
struck by the realization that his most intense creative activity
coincided with his greatest outpouring of literature attacking many
basic tenets and tendencies by which Western society conducts its
business. In 1962, he produced a striking series of posters for
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; in 1964 he penned the now
infamous "First Things First Manifesto," which condemned
excessive expenditure on advertising to the disadvantage of what
was loosely described as "more useful and lasting forms of
communication"; in 1965 he attacked planned obsolescence; in
1967 it was the Vietnam war, elitist brainwashing techniques and
over-production in the communication and packaging industries; and
in 1976 he was casting aspersions on the mindless burgeoning of
logotypes, symbols and other forms of brand identity with which
designers had become obsessed. Join Garland as he considers whether
2001 might be the time to turn over a new leaf and spend the rest
of his days being nice to everybody and looking only for things
he approves of. |
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