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Having adopted British nationality in 1946,
Frederic Henri Kay Henrion was born in Nuremberg on April 18 1914.
From 1933 to 1934, Henrion trained as a textile designer in Paris
with Fred Levi. Henrion studied at the Atelier Paul Colin from
1934 to 1935, also in Paris, as a poster and general graphic designer.
Under Colin, Henrion became familiar with the posters of A.M.
Cassandre and modern art developments, particularly surrealism.
In 1935, Henrion won the first prize at the Salon d'electicité,
Paris, and again in 1936 at the Salon de TSF. Between 1936 and
1939 Henrion had offices in Paris and London, where he designed
posters, packaging and exhibitions, and exhibited worldwide including
at the International Levant Fair Tel-Aviv (1936); the MARS exhibition,
London (1936), the Paris World Exhibition (1937) and the New York
World Fair (1939). When war broken out in 1939, he left France
for good, with an early commission to design for the Smoke Abatement
Exhibition.
During the war, Henrion was appointed consultant for the exhibitions
division of the Ministry of Information, and the American Office
of War Information in London. It was over the wartime period that
Henrion's work became familiar to the British public, and he established
his reputation, as he produced a prolific number of public information
posters, on a wide variety of subjects, including Red Army Day,
VD and a gas exhibition. Henrion utilised a varied design approach,
with many of his posters using skilful photo-montage and surreal
compositions. From 1943 to 1946 he designed all the exhibitions
of the Ministry of Agriculture. In discussion with Abram Games,
Henrion approved of the Royal Society of accidents, and noted
in Art and Industry in 1943 that ROSPA 'have a definite policy
and … commission posters in accordance with this policy with
the result that they are producing some of the best posters of
the war'. Henrion's work was 'familiar to thousands'. He believed
in 'aesthetically conceived design', with the 'idea' the dominant
factor, but with no need for a poster to be an 'eyesore'. Henrion's
ideas on wartime poster design can be seen in a special edition
of Art and Industry, in a debate with Games, in July 1943. Henrion
clearly believed in the importance of the message, and worked
(mostly voluntarily) for causes for which he felt deeply, such
as Oxfam, revealing 'another aspect of his ability to communicate
important messages'. In 1947 he married Daphne Hardy, with whom
he had had two sons and one daughter.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Henrion worked for advertising agencies
and publishers, and was art editor of Contact and Futura magazines
and The Compleat Imbiber. In 1951, he established the design consultancy
Henrion Design Associates, which had numerous leading companies
as clients, including KLM (Dutch airline), British Leyland and
Olivetti. He was awarded an OBE for his contribution to the Festival
of Britain pavilions. In the 1960s, he was a consultant to the
British Transport Commission and consultant on house style design
to British Olivetti and other industries. His work won him five
awards at the international poster exhibition in Vienna, 1946,
and was shown in London, 1951 and 1960, Stockholm, 1953, Paris,
1954, Lausanne, 1957, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and
in various touring exhibitions in the USA from 1953 to 1958. The
notion of a house style and corporate identity itself are often
associated with Henrion, and with Alan Parkin (with whom he had
worked with on the KLM project), produced the seminal work Design
Co-ordination and the Corporate Image in 1968, based on a mathematical
systematic approach. A respected spokesperson for his profession,
Henrion was president of AGI and Master of Faculy of RDI (1972-73);
an influential teacher who lectured at Royal College of Art, London
(1955-65); and leader of the faculty of visual communication at
the London College of Printing (1976-79). In 1982 Henrion became
a consultant for Henrion, Lund and Schmidt, corporate identity
specialists. An exhibition of Henrion's work was held at Staffordshire
Polytechnic in 1989, the first place to offer a design/graphic
design course, largely based upon the influence of Henrion.
Information taken from: All About Posters, FHK Henrion,
http://www.all-about-posters.com/fhk_henrion.html,
accessed August 28 2003; Hope, M. FHK Henrion, Five Decades
a Designer, 1989, p.6; Livingston, A. and Livingston, I.,
Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, 1992, p.98;
Amstutz, W. Who's Who in Graphic Art 1962, p.241; Darracott,
J. and Loftus, B., Second World War Posters, 1981 (1972),
p.34; Brockhampton Press Dictionary of Design, 1997, p.97;
'"Aesthetic" Posters as Answer to Critics', Advertiser's
Weekly, October 12 1944, p.74; 'The Poster Designer and His
Problems', Art and Industry, Vol.35, No.205, July 1943,
pp.17-26
Related Texts
Related Links
- FHK
Henrion Archive
This important archive has recently been relocated in the DHRC
at the University of Brighton. German by birth, Henrion first
trained as a textile designer in Paris before employment as
a graphic designer in the studio of Paul Colin. After establishing
his reputation working in Paris and London during the interwar
years, he came to Britain in 1939. During the War he was a prolific
poster designer for the Ministry of Information and, in 1951,
established Henrion Design Associates, a consultancy concerned
with exhibition, graphic and product design. HDA worked for
many leading companies including KLM, British European Airways
and Girobank. A founder member of ICOGRADA,
he also played a significant role in the development of British
design education. HDA later became more overtly international
in scope through its retitling as HDA International in 1973
and later reconfigured as Henrion, Ludlow & Schmidt in 1982.
- See Colin, P., 'Paul Colin Looks at the World's War Posters',
Art and Industry, Vol. 39, No.231, September 1945, pp.87-90
for Paul Colin's thoughts on wartime poster design.
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