years to XL

A new book to celebrate our 40-year design partnership

This book is an autobiographical portfolio of our design work over the last 40 years and represents the range of jobs and clients we’ve experienced together through a combination of printed work and personal reflections.

It chronicles our progress from London art colleges, meeting at the Royal College of Art, full-time employment and going freelance, to our first design collaboration in 1977. In 1985 we produced the Live Aid Concert Book, our most memorable and exhausting job, which led to further publications on music and entertainment including the Secret Policemean’s Ball, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley. Bob Dylan, The Beatles and Marilyn Monroe.

Outside publishing we were commissioned to produce designs for a range of organisations: posters for the Royal Opera House; an information room for De Beers; publicity for numerous charities including the Samaritans and Greenpeace; promotional work and posters for the Royal Academy, annual reports for the London Chamber of Commerce, magazines for the Design Council, a handbook for the RAC, and various logotypes including one for Starflight Aviation in 1990 that remains unchanged to this day.

In the early ’90s we made the transition to computers, which hugely transformed and broadened our roles as graphic designers. Regardless of technology we believe that originality and ‘the good idea’ will always be essential in graphic design and we would like to think that this book portrays that philosophy.