I realise I have been in and out of the orbit of Abram Games for a long time now. This famous graphic designer who is now best remembered for his Second World War and Transport for London posters. If you don’t know the name, you most certainly will know the work. Perhaps his most iconic design is for the Festival of Britain in 1951.
https://www.europeana.eu/item/9200579/y8hvvnwq
To begin with I simply admired the work, at the Wellcome Collection’s ‘Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?’ exhibition in 2017 or their ‘Teeth’ exhibition from 2018. It was Games’s posters that stayed with me long after the exhibition had faded. Striking visuals, simple yet clever, stylish but clear. The more you think about it the harder it must be to get across information in the distinctive way that he does.
Somehow I think I must have missed the Jewish Museum’s exhibition ‘Designing the 20th Century: Life and works of Abram Games’ which was back in 2014/15, so my first real look at Abram Games was at the National Army Museum in 2019. ‘The art of persuasion: Wartime posters by Abram Games’ was the first chance to not only see a huge range of Games’s work but also start to find out a bit more about the man himself.
Then Mr Games drifted from my mind. It was perhaps last year when I came across a double pack of vintage playing cards in a charity shop with an amusing Financial Times symbol on the front, they caught my eye as I spent a good few years working as a researcher at the FT – of course I just had to have them. It was only when trying to find out a bit more about them that up popped the designer, none other than Abram Games.
It seems my fascination kept being stoked. Then right at the end of last year I visited the London Transport Museum’s new permanent poster gallery and had the joy of seeing more of Abram Games, but not just the posters. There were fabulous examples of his working methods. I loved the 1975 tiger poster advertising London Zoo but what was more fascinating was a sheet of designs where his thought process was laid bare. One whole page of images, worked and re-worked, tested and tried, before the final idea, refined and focussed, emerged.
Then there were the tiny thumbnail sketches of larger designs. These beautiful works in miniature, working for the viewer on small scale just as they did in their larger sister versions. I was hooked. Where had all this work come from? Was it in the London Transport Museum archive? It was only then I noticed the material had come from the Estate of Abram Games.
A little bit of research, a little bit of passion to find out more and a few emails later and on a very cold January day I found myself on my way to meet Abram Games’ daughter Naomi – sometimes you just can’t ignore the little signs that tell you to find out more.
In a flat, surrounded by vintage posters, plants and oil paintings, including Abram’s portrait of his wife and Naomi’s mother, Marianne, I settle down with a cup of tea to hear Naomi talk about her father, the man who created such memorable work that seems to be following me.
Born in 1914 in Whitechapel, of Eastern European Jewish descent, early school reports show it wasn’t always evident the career path that Abram would take. A 1925 school report calls his drawing ‘weak’ and his writing ‘poor’ and ‘untidy’. He left Saint Martin’s School of Art after two terms and yet there was a determination in him that saw Abram attend night school to learn his craft. Clearly that early criticism from his head teacher calling him ‘lazy and indifferent’ sparked something in the artist he was yet to become as he stayed in contact with that head teacher and went on to complete an oil painting of him in later life.
An obituary from the Independent in 1996 called Abram ‘austere, with a puritanical demeanour’ whilst the Observer noted that he could come across as ‘arrogant’. Naomi admits he wasn’t always the easiest of men. Although I kind of admire his approach to clients who didn’t like his design – he would just resign.
“The blighters rejected a group of my new security posters – the whole lot. I was so wild and upset I told my Chief I would rather chuck the job than amuse myself if it was not really wanted.”1
The final design he came up with would be the only design he showed his client. It was a different time when he would produce everything; the concept, the design, the hand lettering, the artwork, everything from his hand. Really unthinkable when compared to today when so many people are involved in the advertising process and multiple ideas and brain-storming can dilute an idea.
“The best work designers produce is most often the direct result of the client’s courage in allowing his chosen designer a free hand to interpret his task in his own individual way. The continual restriction and pulling back, so often met with, produces only mediocrity.”2
I cast my mind back to the London Transport Museum ‘Global Poster Gallery’ which highlights the back and forth of client and designer relationship. I wonder how Abram reacted when London Transport Publicity Officer, H.F. Hutchinson, wrote in 1959 – “In any event, the backside of a coach is not something we want people to look at…. It seems to me that you should abandon the idea of using a coach at all and build it on the two heads”.
It was Abram’s photographer father that encouraged and supported his work, giving him the airbrush in the 1930s3 that he used in the photography studio. Naomi refers to the airbrush as a ‘third hand’ that would later be used to create some of Abram’s most memorable posters. He became so proficient in using it he would even sign his cheques using the airbrush, as his daughter says, ‘he did like to show off’.
Naomi asserts that her father always wanted to be a poster designer, he called ‘posters the kingpin of all publicity media’. Like many living in the early 20th century, war disrupted Abram’s life, by the time he was called up to serve he had 24 posters published. Abram spent a year with the infantry before his creative talents saw him packed off to an attic room at the top of the War Office in Whitehall where he worked on recruitment posters.
At a time when the power of poster propaganda really found its feet, Abram’s work was often uncompromising and even today the striking images don’t pull any punches. Abram had captured his comrades in sketches during his time on the front line and it was those observations that gave his work authenticity. He understood the challenges of surviving in the army and the messages that needed to be conveyed.
An infamous ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) recruitment poster aimed at encouraging young women to join up saw him attract his first criticism from the powers that be. Thelma Cazalet-Keir, Conservative MP, called into question the suitability of a beautiful blonde in the House of Commons, as the image was seen as too frivolous, too glamourous, and too attractive for the job – “Women should be attracted into the army by patriotism, not glamour”4. Abram comments that they requested a “good solid girl with patriotic appeal” who would “do her duty”.5
Aside from a beautiful blonde, it is the surrealist edge to many of the war posters that are most memorable, a spade becomes a ship, mosquitos become eyes and a knife and fork on the dinner table extend down into the earth to encourage the populous to ‘Grow your own food’.
Abram felt the ‘Your talk may kill your comrades’ poster from 1942 was one of his most important and Naomi tells me through-out his career it was the social impact of his work that always mattered to him the most.
But blonde bombshells weren’t the only time Abram got himself into trouble. Ernest Bevin, the wartime Minister of Labour, took offence at a poster commissioned by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs depicting the past and future of Finsbury Health Centre and displayed in an exhibition called ‘Poster Design in Wartime Britain’. Part of a series called ‘Your Britain, Fight for it Now’ the poster depicted London slums and a young boy with rickets. It was ripped down by Bevin, Churchill remarked that the work was “disgraceful libel on the conditions prevailing in Great Britain before the war…”.6
War propaganda posters were just the start of Abram’s career and as the light began to fade on that January afternoon we turned to her father’s work, folder upon folder of drawings and sketches. I might have known about war and transport posters but I had no idea of the depth and range of Abram’s work. My Financial Times playing cards were just the tip of the iceberg, but what a lovely place to start. I brought my cards to show Naomi and what should come out first in the folders but designs for the Financial Times. Beautiful little artworks, some never published, a cricketer emerging from the pages of a pink financial paper and perhaps my favourite, an umbrella transforms into a golf club but still the recognisable pink paper trousers remain with an adorable little turn of a foot at the tee off.
There are drawings that show Abram’s skill as an artist not just a graphic designer and the sheer range of work began to emerge from the folders Naomi has selected for me to see, from stamps, to the emblem for the Queen’s Award to Industry and the corporate work for Guinness. You can see the working through of ideas across a page and the pencil square often drawn around the one he finally settled on.
Naomi recalls how the three of them, her brother and sister too, would be called into the home studio in the conservatory, an artwork propped up in the corner to give their honest opinions on what they saw. If it wasn’t obvious to a child then it wouldn’t work on anyone else either. When the design was complete a full stop was added to the Abram Games signature – the work was complete. If it wasn’t clear from those conservatory viewings the design went in the bin and it was back to the drawing board.
“I wind the spring and the public, in looking at the poster, will have that spring released in its mind”.7
I can just imagine him waiting to see this in the minds of those he invited into his studio to give their opinions and the pleasure the moment the spring was released.
Still in awe of seeing Abram’s hand and the charming Financial Times artworks we look at stamp designs including a beautiful Churchill stamp idea created for a competition submission in 1965 -the year of Churchill’s death. Abram would certainly have had the last laugh on Churchill if it had been chosen. There is also the stamp design for the 1948 Olympic Games and Abram would often work on a miniature scale even when it wasn’t for a stamp design.
“If ideas don’t work an inch high, they will never work.”8
Next we came across very recognisable designs for the 1951 Festival of Britain, the bunting idea coming from Abram seeing his wife, Marianne, hanging out the washing on the line. The bold design and bright colours perfectly capturing that spirit of post-war optimism.
After the war, in 1956, Abram went on to become Consultant Art Director at Penguin and experimental book cover designs were to follow. Some designs were created by Abram and he commissioned other artists to work on designs for Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham covers. Unfortunately the work was too controversial for Penguin, ten months after they appeared in UK bookshops the project was shelved.
“As far as I can see the unanimous opinion within the firm is that we should desist from coloured covers as soon as possible. There is now evidence from many quarters that those of our titles, which wear this kind of Joseph’s Coat, are not being treated as proper Penguins by most booksellers and are finding their way into the racks of lurid covers.”9
Editor in Chief of Penguin books Bill Williams.
You would think that work alone impressive enough but still there is more to this ‘poster designer’. Tube tiles come in the form of the ‘Stockwell Swan’ and it is great to see Abram’s work still celebrated when I take a quick detour to south London one day after my visit with Naomi.
I am overwhelmed with the amount of work Abram has done but some of the best is yet to come. Naomi shows me a simple piece of black card, intricate geometric patterns are drawn on it in white. It is such a treat to see this. Abram designed the first moving BBC ident in 1953, using compasses, dividers and ruling pens filled with Indian ink. Even though he didn’t have a television that certainly didn’t stop him. Naomi writes about the creation on the National Science and Media Museum website10 –
“He concluded the circle or sphere would represent the globe, and an eye would signify vision, but it had to be in three dimensions. Flashes of lightning, or wings, on either side of the circle were drawn to represent electrical impulses, and forces and arcs were added. A vertical line topped by arrow points stabilised the whole design. To aid the illusion of movement and time, an arc of light was incorporated, starting from the outer wings and moving inwards towards the revolving eye.”
A moving model was made from piano and wire brass, it lasted just long enough to capture it on film for one revolution then it broke. Abram may not have even had a television but history was made and this first iteration of the moving BBC ident lasted eight years. It certainly made an impression on the public and Abram kept the news cuttings, pleased that his design had provoked a reaction. It soon gained a number of nicknames including – ‘the ruddy cross-eyed wonder’, ‘the Batwings’, ‘the Thing’ and ‘the Staring Eye’. A letter from AE Macnair appeared in the News Chronicle:
‘Dear Sir, my first sight of the BBC’s new TV symbol caused such a disagreeable emotional reaction that I wrote down and analysed the ideas it suggested to my mind: Menace, darkness, Germans, spiked helmet, bird of prey, baleful eye, cage, torture, bandaged head, nets, whips, thongs, Arial bombs, attacks, pincer movements, Fascist flashes.’11
As I sift through pages of work I find a small packet of photographs, in my hand in black white I hold a small image – Abram stares at me, leaning over his creation. It is as if the years disappear in a snap.
As the light begins to leave the sky, I know I have to take my leave of Naomi but still there is one more treasure in the folders. Not content with posters, stamps, books and BBC idents there is a design for a stained-glass window made for the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women, originally commissioned in 1987 for AJEX House in Stamford Hill.
Each of the coloured strands at the centre of the design represents a medal ribbon from British campaigns that Jewish service people have fought in. With a little jolt of recognition I realise I have seen this too and never knew the connection, it was on display at the Jewish Museum in Camden. Another moment I have been surrounded by the Abram’s work and not even realised.12
I feel so lucky to be able to see this work and appreciate the skill, imagination and sheer amount of hours spent working on this art, page upon page. The fact that Abram did it all makes it even more impressive. There is no multiplicity of voice here, he had so many different techniques, he knew how to bring everything together from concept to final artwork. What stays with me is the refining and refining, the distilling of an idea, again and again. The work ethic, the concentration and focus, always thinking and creating.
“A poster is a boiling down; it’s like peeling the skin off an onion, you go on peeling it off and you get a different quality each time. So it is with design. You reject, you pare away until you get to the essential.”13
I am touched most by the little scraps of newspaper with doodles and scribbles. Naomi tells me her father worked best on public transport, travelling on the bus, not disturbed by interruptions or family life, you can see the lightning strikes of inspiration, the touch points of a creative mind at work.
“Buses were great to work on because nobody bothered him; there were no phones, no children; he could concentrate on a bus. So he used to scribble on anything that was available, a newspaper, scraps of paper that were in his pocket, and then he’d get into the studio, get onto his tall stool at his desk, lay out a sheet in front of him and begin, and he sometimes worked on hundreds and hundreds of these sheets of layout paper before he actually resolved his design.”14
This blog might be about one man and his legacy, but it is also about Naomi, a daughter, her brother and her sister, the story they have carried. Naomi has lived and breathed this legacy since her father’s death in 1996. Beginning as a child who avoided his studio and temper if disturbed, then called in with siblings to give opinions on the latest work and still in 2024 giving talks about her father’s work.
Naomi makes me think of the times her father wouldn’t come for dinner, working away on the latest idea and design until it was perfectly crafted and captured. I should also say that there were more creations and ideas I haven’t even touch on in this blog! The Cona coffee maker and duplicator- an early form of photocopier, so many avenues that this man’s inspirational mind travelled down.
What a privilege to see even a snippet of this archive, so rich and so deep. Not just posters but a whole way of working, a process and technique – creation, development sketches and distillation to create Abram’s trademark ‘maximum meaning, minimum means’.
What of the future? Naomi has written books and contributed to countless exhibitions but now is the time she is thinking of what next for this archive.
When I say Abram Games was so much more than a poster artist I am not in any way wanting to denigrate what a poster artist is particularly remembering a time when posters were so much more important in getting messages across.
His skills in drawing, in graphic design, in bringing so many elements together. His changes in style over time, moving from early air brushing techniques to more solid graphic blocks of colours in the later London Transport Museum posters and the value in his approach – “be ruthless with yourself, pare everything down to its simplest form”.
Then there is that something extra, something I haven’t perhaps focussed on that much in this blog. It is my joy in his work. I love the Financial Times character, so much charm and humour for a newspaper that has a reputation for being serious and yet somehow still capturing the essence in pin striped suits and city umbrellas. It makes me think of the foreword to Naomi’s book about Abram’s time at Penguin books, written by Romek Marber. He talks about seeing Abram’s posters for the Times, the Financial Times and Guinness.
“My face would light up in a smile, for an aspiring graphic designer this was a good start to the day.”15
Abram Games deserves to be honoured as a great artist and his archive needs to be taken on for the next generation, not just to appreciate it but to learn from it. Games was a visiting lecturer in Design at the Royal College of Art and the impact of his teaching is perhaps best left to student Geoffrey Ireland to describe.
“He was a doer, unlike some other teachers at the time. It was not so much the technique in presenting his images, airbrush and Cow Gum galore, but the brilliance with which he arrived at an appropriate solution. Those pages of associated ideas that filled his sketch pads, the relentless ‘don’t let it beat you: beat it’ attitude was so inspiring. It was his systematic approach that impressed me most.”16
It needs to be, and Naomi equally wants it to be, a living breathing teaching archive. There is so much here to tell future students about graphic design, about art, about the communication of ideas and just as important – the process and hard work that goes into the simplicity of quite amazing and inspirational work.
“It’s a working archive, all the time, students come over to look over the work. My father was a great educator and he wanted it to be a working one, not a dead one.” said Naomi Games.
Talking to Naomi it feels like a pivotal moment for this archive and it would be an absolute crime if it were not given the attention and dedication it deserves. It is a lot for Naomi and her family to have carried all these years. As I leave her on a dark cold winter’s evening I keep thinking of the story she told me of her father and his inventions. He had a lathe brought into the house, her mother got exasperated and he was banished to the attic to work on his creations. Naomi spoke of coils of metal shavings stuck to her foot as a child, little springs of silver snagged on a jumper. Even after all this time, the memories of the genius of the man that won’t quite free themselves.
Abram said “You have to be dead for 30 years before you become great”17. It will be 30 years in 2026, perhaps it is about time to secure that legacy. Naomi can’t add a full stop to this story until her father’s work is in safe hands, not just safe but the right hands. I hope this blog might go some way to helping in that journey.
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With huge thanks to Naomi Games for being so generous with her time. Images are from London Transport Museum, National Army Museum, Wellcome Collection and V&A. Copyright Estate of Abram Games.
References
[1] National Army Museum- Online Collection https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=2013-07-2-7
[2] Abram Games and Penguin Books, Naomi Games, pg 13.
[3] Abram Games and Penguin Books, Naomi Games, pg 6.
[4] A selection of Abram Games’ most iconic posters, 22 August 2014, Daily Telegraph, [accessed Feb 2024] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/11046109/A-selection-of-Abram-Games-most-iconic-posters.html
[5] Abram Games: Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means. DVD.
[6] A vision still worth fighting for, 28 March 1995, Independent, [accessed Feb 2024] https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O549265/your-talk-may-kill-your-poster-games-abram/
[7] Designing the first BBC television ident, by Naomi Games, 1 December 2022, Science + Media Museum [accessed Feb 2024] https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/designing-the-first-bbc-television-ident/
[8] Designing the first BBC television ident, by Naomi Games, 1 December 2022, Science + Media Museum [accessed Feb 2024] https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/designing-the-first-bbc-television-ident/
[9] Abram Games and Penguin Books, Naomi Games, pg 36.
[10] Designing the first BBC television ident by Naomi Games, Science and Media Museum. [accessed Jan 2024] https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/designing-the-first-bbc-television-ident/
[11] Designing the first BBC television ident by Naomi Games, Science and Media Museum. [accessed Jan 2024] https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/designing-the-first-bbc-television-ident/
[12] Conservation in action! [accessed Jan 2024] https://sarahfairhurstjmm.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/conservation/
[13] Designing the first BBC television ident by Naomi Games, Science and Media Museum. [accessed Jan 2024] https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/designing-the-first-bbc-television-ident/
[14] History of the BBC: The Television Symbol: The story of Abram Games’s batwings logo, BBC. [accessed Jan 2024] https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/research/bbc-idents/television-symbol
[15] Abram Games and Penguin Books, Naomi Games, pg 3.
[16] Abram Games and Penguin Books, Naomi Games, pg 22.
[17] Abram Games and Penguin Books, Naomi Games, pg 41.
Abram Games
Abram Games website [accessed Jan 2024] https://www.abramgames.com/
Blue Plaque erected in 2019, English Heritage. [accessed Jan 2024] https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/abram-games
Abram Games: Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means. DVD. https://www.abramgames.com/dvd
Obituaries and articles
Obituary: Abraham Games, 28 August 1996, Independent. [accessed Feb 2024] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-abraham-games-1311967.html
Abram Games, the poster boy with principles, 23 August 2014, Observer. [accessed Feb 2024] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/23/abram-games-poster-graphic-design-principles
Book
Abram Games and Penguin Books, Naomi Games, Penguin Collectors Society, 2013. https://www.penguincollectorssociety.org/shopdetail.php?productID=6&sortfield=publishdate&sortdir=DESC&page=2
Exhibitions
2014 Jewish Museum – ‘Designing the 20th Century: Life and work of Abram Games’. [accessed Feb 2024] https://jewishmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/designing-the-20th-century-life-and-work-of-abram-games/
2017 Wellcome Collection – ‘Can graphic design can save your life?’ [accessed Jan 2024] https://wellcomecollection.org/pages/Wuw0uiIAACZd3Sou
2018 Wellcome Collection – ‘Teeth’. [accessed Jan 2024] https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/WgV_ACUAAIu2P_ZM
2019 National Army Museum – ‘The art of persuasion: Wartime posters of Abram Games’. [accessed Feb 2024] https://www.nam.ac.uk/whats-on/art-persuasion-wartime-posters-abram-games
2023 London Transport Museum – Global Poster Gallery [accessed Feb 2024] https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/visit/museum-guide/global-poster-gallery
Blog reviews – Tincture of Museum
‘Can graphic design can save your life’ – Wellcome Collection 2017 https://tinctureofmuseum.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/can-graphic-design-save-your-life-wellcome-collection-7-september-2017-14th-january-2018/
‘Teeth’ – Wellcome Collection 2018 https://tinctureofmuseum.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/teeth-wellcome-collection-may-2018/
‘The art of persuasion: Wartime posters of Abram Games’ – National Army Museum 2019 https://tinctureofmuseum.wordpress.com/2019/04/11/the-art-of-persuasion-wartime-posters-by-abram-games-national-army-museum-april-2019/
Tube tiles
London Transport Museum – collections online. [accessed Feb 2024] https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/photographs/item/2003-7033
BBC Ident
Designing the first BBC television ident by Naomi Games, Science and Media Museum. [accessed Jan 2024] https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/designing-the-first-bbc-television-ident/
History of the BBC: The Television Symbol: The story of Abram Games’s batwings logo, BBC. [accessed Jan 2024] https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/research/bbc-idents/television-symbol
BBC Archive – Facebook video on Abram Games BBC Bat Wings. [accessed Jan 2024] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1776944122670759
Jewish Museum Memorial Window
Conservation in action! [accessed Jan 2024] https://sarahfairhurstjmm.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/conservation/
Abram Games: the art of remembrance, Aug 2013. [accessed Jan 2024] https://sarahfairhurstjmm.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/conservation/
Tincture of Museum 
A fascinating read
Thanks Liz