Aficionados of some of the most iconic and influential pieces of 21st century British graphic design should head over to Volume and support the crowdfunder for Unit Editions’ new monograph Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, the definitive book on the life and output of Margaret Calvert. Edited by designer and educator Adrian Shaughnessy and designed by Calvert herself with Scott Williams and Henrik Kubel of A2/SW/HK, this 240-page hardback is being crowdfunded now.
Slipcased edition, Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, Unit Editions
Building on the 2020 Design Museum exhibition ‘Woman at Work’ – which unfortunately took place during the pandemic – this is the first ever book to focus on Calvert’s work. Described as a ‘pioneer of design for public service [and] a groundbreaking typographer’, Calvert (born 1936) received this year’s New York Type Directors Club Medal, showing just how venerated she is in graphic design circles.
Spread from Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, Unit Editions
Few designers can be said to have such an impact on a national character. Her long collaboration with her former Chelsea School of Art tutor Jock Kinneir started when Calvert was just 21 with work on new signage for Gatwick Airport. That led to a commission to create signage for the entire British road network, a typographic, pictographic and organisational feat that occupied the two for many years and is an acknowledged design classic can still be seen in use today.
Road signs, from Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, Unit Editions
Woman at Work charts the genesis and evolution of this lifetime of creativity, covering the iconic signage work with later projects for the British Rail and the British Airports Authority. There’s also the 1980 Tyne and Wear Metro identity (the typeface for which was available from Monotype as the Calvert typeface). Unseen archive imagery and preparatory sketches abound and there’s also a focus on Calvert’s role as an educator at the RCA in London and her later work as a solo typographer.
Airport signage, from Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, Unit Editions
The late Phil Baines once noted in Eye Magazine that ‘Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert’s graphic design amounted to a house style for Britain, characterised by the use of sans serif alphabets with careful and sparing use of colour and a great attention to detail.’ Calvert was awarded the Lifetime Achievement London Design Medal in 2017.
As with all crowdfunded projects, there are multiple editions and rewards, including a slipcase, prints and a special signed ‘Woman at Work’ reflective road sign.
Special editions of the book receive a limited edition road sign
Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, from £55, Unit Editions, available from Volume, Vol.co, @Vol.co
UnitEditions.com, A2SWHK.co.uk
Spread from Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, Unit Editions
Spread from Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, Unit Editions
Spread from Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, Unit Editions
-
A new Oxford Street pop-up celebrates IKEA's blue bagsIKEA's iconic blue bag gets its own pop-up concept store, the 'Hus of Frakta'.
-
Audemars Piguet and Kaws have created the Royal Oak Concept watch we didn't know we neededThe Audemars Piguet x Kaws Royal Oak Concept Tourbillon 'Companion' is slick wrist-worn art
-
A friendly rivalry coloured by kinship: Wendy Maruyama and Tom Loeser on their two-artist show'I wanted to make furniture, just not traditional furniture, but weird furniture,' says Wendy Maruyama on ‘Colorama’, a two-artist show presented at design gallery Superhouse (until 11 January 2025)
-
The Acme Novelty Datebook is Chris Ware’s last volume of intriguing sketchbooks and thoughtsChris Ware presents his ‘artisanal rewritings of personal conflict’, a third and final volume charting the American artist and author’s process
-
Phaidon’s new Graphic Classics is a lavish greatest hits of graphic designGraphic Classics is a compendium of seven centuries of visual culture, from the everyday and ephemeral to visionary works that reshaped our world
-
A hundred years of Triennale posters documented in a new bookTriennale posters from a century of exhibitions at the Milanese institution are the subject of a new book celebrating its history
-
The Shining: new book sheds alternative light on Kubrick’s infamous filmWe speak to designer Craig Oldham, editor of the new book The Shining: a Visual and Cultural Haunting about this cross-cultural reframing of Stanley Kubrick’s epic film
