Abram Games (London, 1914—London, 1996), British graphic designer. 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... Graphic design is the applied art of arranging image and text to communicate a message. ...

Born Abraham Gamse, he was the son of immigrants: a Latvian photographer and a Russo-Polish seamstress. He anglicized his name to Games at age 12 and was essentially an autodidactic designer, having attended London's St. Martins School of Art (today the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design) for only two terms. However, while working as a "studio boy" in commercial design firm Askew-Young in London 1932-36, he was attending night classes in life drawing. He was fired from this position due to his jumping over four chairs as a prank. 1934, his entry was second in the Health Council Competition and, 1935, won a poster competition for the London City Council. 1936-40, he was on his own as a freelance poster artist. This is a list of notable photographers in the art, documentary and fashion traditions. ... Turn of the century sewing in Detroit, Michigan An old sewing machine Sewing is an ancient craft involving the stitching of cloth, animal skins, furs, or other materials, using needle and thread. ... Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) is self-education or self-directed learning. ... Central Saint Martins - Southampton Row, Holborn Central Saint Martins (ex-St Martins) in Charing Cross Road. ... London City Council is the governing body of the city of London, Ontario, Canada. ...

The style of his work — refined but vigorous compared to the work of contemporaries — has earned him a place in the pantheon of the best of 20th-century graphic designers. In acknowledging his power as a propagandist, he claimed, “I wind the spring and the public, in looking at the poster, will have that spring released in its mind.” Because of the length of his career — over six decades — his work is essentially a record of the era's social history. Some of Britain's most iconic images include those by Games. An example is the "Join the ATS" propaganda poster of 1941, nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" recruitment poster and sexually very lame by today's standards. From 1942, during World War II, Games's service as the Official War Artist resulted in 100 or so posters. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Vasily Vereshchagin. ...

1946, he resumed his freelance practice and worked for clients such Shell, Financial Times, Guinness, British Airways, London Transport, El Al, and the United Nations. He designed stamps for Britain, Jersey, and Israel. There were also book jackets for Penguin Books and logos for the 1951 Festival of Britain (winning the 1948 competition) and the 1965 Queen's Award to Industry. Evidence of his pioneering contributions is the first (1953) moving on-screen symbol of BBC Television. 1946-53, Games was a visiting lecturer in graphic design at London's Royal College of Art; 1958, was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to graphic design; 1959, was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI). In the 1950s and of Jewish heritage, he was known to have spent some time in Israel where, among other activities, he designed stamps for the Israeli Post Office and taught a course in postage-stamp design. Royal Dutch Shell PLC is a multinational oil company (oil major) of British and Dutch origins. ... The Financial Times (FT) is an international business newspaper printed on distinctive salmon pink broadsheet paper. ... Guinness logo World War II era advert. ... For the 1930s airline of similar name, see British Airways Ltd. ... London Transport could mean: London Passenger Transport Board (1933-1948) London Transport Executive (1948-1963) London Transport Board (1963-1970) London Transport (1970-1984) - an agency within the Greater London Council London Regional Transport (1984-2000) Transport for London Transport in London History of transport in London (1933-2003) Category... Categories: Airline stubs | Companies of Israel | Transportation in Israel | Airlines of Israel ... The foundation of the U.N. The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate co-operation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress and human rights issues. ... Penguin Books is a British publisher founded in 1935 by Allen Lane. ... The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition which opened in May 1951 in London. ... The Queens Award for Enterprise is an award for British companies and other organizations who excel at international trade, innovation or sustainable development. ... The Royal College of Art in South Kensington, London. ... The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions; in decreasing order of seniority, these are Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross (GBE) Knight Commander... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination...

Games was also an industrial designer of sorts. Activities in this discipline included the design of the 1947 Cona coffee percolator (produced from 1949, reworked in 1959 and still in production) and inventions such as a circular vacuum and the early 1960s portable handheld duplicating machine by Gestetner. But the duplicator was not put into production due to the demise of mimeography. A coffee percolator, caffettiera, is a type of pot used to brew coffee. ... Regular vacuum cleaner for home use. ... Duplicating machines were the predecessors of modern document-reproduction technology. ... The Gestetner, named for its inventor David Gestetner, is a duplicating machine. ...

In arriving at a poster design, Games would render up to 30 small preliminary sketches and then combine two or three into the final one. In the developmental process, he would work small because, he asserted, if poster designs “don't work an inch high, they will never work.” He would also call on a large number of photographic images as source material. Purportedly, if a client rejected a proposed design (which seldom occurred), Games would resign and suggest that the client commission someone else.

Exhibition

• Abram Games, Graphic Designer (1914–1996): Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means, Design Museum, London, 2003

References

• Amstutz, W. (1962).Who's Who in Graphic Art, Zurich: Graphis Press.
• Gombrich, E.H., et al. (1990).A. Games: Sixty Years of Design, South Glamorgan, UK: Institute of Higher Education. | ISBN 0-9515777-0-0
• Livingston, Alan and Isabella (2003).The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, London: Thames and Hudson. | ISBN 0-500-20353-9
• Exhibition catalog. Moriarty, Catherine, et al. (2003). Abram Games, Graphic Designer: Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means, London: Lund Humphries. | ISBN 0-85331-881-6
• Games, Naomi, et al. (2003). Abram Games: His Life and Work, New York Princeton Architectural Press. | ISBN 1-56898-364-6

External links

Official Abram Games website