One student at Batley, Nicholas Meagher, who was a year or two older than the rest of us, once commented that he could see why so many students liked graphics because you could take a so-so drawing and turn it into a finished graphic. That was certainly the aspect that I enjoyed in Colin Wood’s graphics class.
I liked the idea that by dint of putting in an hour or two’s work, with a bit of practice with oil pastels or a ruling pen, that I could convert my wobbly grey sketchbook drawings, in this case of road signs, into something presentable. We had access to the glossy Graphis magazine in the college library and I can see it’s influence in my oil pastel design.
Colin Wood, our tutor, was fresh from the Graphic Design course at Leeds and I loved the crispness and wit of his designs, which generally made use of black and white photography – usually featuring himself in some role or other – on a cut-to-white background with a pithy slogan. A useful antidote to my habitual woolliness.
These pan lids hanging below the shelf above my Mum’s kitchen sink, make me nostalgic not only for the simplicity of the Batley version of 1960s graphic design, but also for the everyday quirks of our comfortable home. I’ve still got that mirror, my Dad’s shaving mirror, hanging on the end of a shelf in my studio. Note the tube of adhesive: there was a lot of make-do-and-mend at that time, and it was usually my Mum who acted as handyman.