| Of Jewish descent,
Abram Games was born in London, the son of an artist photographer.
A modernist graphic and industrial designer, he was mainly self-taught,
attending St Martin's School of Art for only six months, although
he took evening classes whilst working for Askew-Younge, a commercial
London studio between 1932 and 1936, before being fired 'for his
rebellious and undisciplined attitude'. In 1934 he came second in
the Health Council Competition, and in 1935 he won a poster competition
for London City Council. He then worked as a freelance poster artist
from 1936 to 1940, designing posters for many commercial companies,
including Shell, London Transport and the GPO.
When working on a new design for a poster, Games would produce
up to thirty small sketches for images, from which two or three
would be combined towards the final idea. Games deliberately designed
on a small scale, as he believed that posters needed to work from
a distance, and if they "don't work an inch high they will
never work". Sketches were shown to his family and friends,
and those designs that drew a blank expression were rejected,
with the most successful sketch scaled up to a painted 'rough'.
Only one idea was ever presented to a client, and if rejected,
Games suggested that they employed another designer. If the design
was accepted, the design would be enlarged, either by a photographer,
or Games himself would project the image onto an easel. The finished
design would be transferred to an art board, and hung on the studio
wall for a week before receiving the stamp of approval, the full
stop after his signature. Games insisted both on philosophical
involvement with the subject matter, and on 'being responsible
for each poster in its entirety: the concept, the slogan, the
copy, the design and the layout'.
Although Games worked in his father's photographic studio for
two years before he worked for Askew-Younge, and was keenly interested
in the mechanics of image reproduction, and the work of Man Ray
and other pioneers of photo-montage, Games' chosen tool was the
airbrush (at least until the 1950s when it became difficult for
the airbrush to compete with crisper photographic designs). Games
collected vast quantities of photographic sources, but used them
only as source material, with the airbrush ensuring that gestures
and expressions fitted the purpose of the poster. Games also regularly
visited the Royal College of Surgeons in London to 'perfect his
knowledge of human anatomy and his ability to draw the human body'.
In 1940 Games jointed the Infantry, but was recalled to the War
Office in June 1941 to design a recruiting poster for the Royal
Armoured Corps (RAC). Games had previously sent a memorandum 'concerning
the use of enlisted designers for Army instructional posters'.
Having designed posters for the RAC and ATS, Games again proposed
his idea, and was given the chance to put it into practice, with
the knowledge that he would return to his unit if the idea failed.
The experiment was so successful that in 1942 Games was offered
the newly created poster of Official War Office Poster Designer.
Art and Industry noted that Games' peace-time work was 'well-known',
and that he was 'more usefully employed' in public relations than
in an infantry unit. In a later article, Games described that
his experience in the Infantry had given him 'an understanding
of what the ranker thinks, does and, perhaps more important, does
not do', as the army mentality was different from that of the
'outside world'.
On appointment, Games was given the rank of Lieutenant, and later
Captain. Frank Newbould was appointed as his civilian assistant
, also in 1942. Games designed over one-hundred posters before
he left the War Office in 1946, including several that were adapted
by the MOI for civilian use, and several that attracted controversy,
including the ATS 'glamour girl' of 1941; the ABCA 'Finsbury Health
Centre' Your Britain poster of 1942; and the Talk in Here poster
of 1944, the first two of which were withdrawn. Games' work was
widely exhibited amount the allies during the war years, and his
wartime work was discussed in many publications, including three
times in Art and Industry, where he analysed his own work. In
1948 he wrote in Art and Industry: "I feel strongly that
the high purpose of the wartime posters was mainly responsible
for their excellence."
Games married Marianne Selfeld in 1945, with whom he had one
son and two daughters, and in 1946 he resumed his freelance practice,
going 'on to produce hundreds of posters for private and public
organisations in Britain and Israel'. With a personal philosophy
of 'maximum meaning, minimum means', his posters, adverts, symbols
and stamps had a 'distinctive conceptual and symbolic quality'.
In 1951 Games was chosen to design the Festival of Britain logo.
Other noted symbols he designed include the 1955 BBC Television
and 1965 Queen's Award for Industry logos. Games was a visiting
lecturer in graphic design at the Royal College of Art, London
between 1946 and 1953, and was appointed Royal Designer for Industry
(RDI) in 1959.
In 1958 Games was awarded the OBE for services to graphic design.
His work is highly collectable, particularly as most undistributed
posters and originals were pulped by government order in 1946.
Few works on Second World War propaganda are complete without
at least one of Games' designs, and on his death in 1991, obituaries
followed in major newspapers. In 2003 an exhibition of his work
was held at the Design Museum in London.
Information taken from: Amstutz, W., Who's Who in Graphic
Art, Zurich: Graphis Press, 1962 p.234; The Design Museum,
'Abram Games (1914-1996): Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means', notes
accompanying exhibition, November 2003; 'Abram Games', London
Transport Museum Database, February 2000; Brockhampton Press Dictionary
of Design, 1997, p.65; 'War Office Posters designed by Abram Games',
Art and Industry, Vol.32, No.189, January 1942, pp.9-11;
'Poster Appeal to the Army', Art and Industry, Vol.33,
No.195, September 1943, pp.62-64; 'The Poster Designer and His
Problems', Art and Industry, Vol.35, No.205, July 1943,
pp.17-26; 'Debate with Henrion'; Games, A. 'Approach to the Poster',
Art and Industry, Vol. 45, No. 265, July 1948, pp.24-29;
Gowing, M., 'The Creative Mind in Advertising: Abram Games', Art
and Industry, Vol. 62, No. 372, June 1957, pp.192-197, and
214; Abram Games file, Imperial War Museum, London Transport Museum
Database; Darracott, J. and Loftus, B., Second World War Posters,
1981 (1972), pp.32-33; Livingston, A. and Livingston, I., Dictionary
of Graphic Design and Designers, 1992, p.82; All About Posters,
'Abram Games', http://www.all-about-posters.com/abramgames.html,
accessed 28 August 2003
Books
Related Links
|
