Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I  From: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com To: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com Subject: Alan Fletcher Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 20:56:34 -0400 Good Day Mr. Fletcher, my name is Jarae Thompson and I would like to interview about what made you become a graphic designer, what drove you into becoming one what kind of scholarships did you apply to etc etc. How is that? Will you let me interview you?

From: alan fletcher@hotmail.com To: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 21:01:09 -0400 Hello Jarae, it will be my pleasure for you to interview me. I will happily answer any question that comes to mind. From: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com To: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 21:18:41 -0400 Thank you, now where were you born exactly?  From: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com

Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I To: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:10:57 -0400 I was born in a British family in Kenya in 1931, when I was five my father became very ill and I was brought up in to living with my mother and my grandparents in West London.  From: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com To: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:11:51 -0400 what was your childhood like? From: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com To: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:27:14 -0400 When World War II started I attended Christ Hospital, a boarding school in Horsham, where I wore a uniform that I later described it as a " second-hand medieval costume". Along with my classmates, mine was destined for a career in the army, the church or banking. Being totally unsuited to any of these, I opted out of the rigid grooves of post-war British middle class life and took up a place at Hammersmith School of Art. From: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com To: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:32:01 -0400 Are there any other schools that you attended? Also how did you start your career?  From: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com To: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:48:03 -0400

Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I I have attended four different art schools, each one more forward looking and cosmopolitain than the last. Leaving Hammersmith for the livelier environment of the Central School, I found myself in class with my future partners Colin Forbes and Theo Crosby as well as such other future luminaries as Derek Birdsall and Ken Garland. After graduating from the Central School, I spent a year teaching English in Barcelona and then won a place at the Royal College of Art, where my contemporaries included the artists Peter Blake and Joe Tilson. Towards the end of my three-year stint at the RCA, the head of design exchanged places with Alvin Elsenman, my opposite number at Yale University. I suggested that, if professors were able to swap places, students should have the same privilege. As a result a travel scholarship awarded to Fletcher on graduation on the condition that he attend classes at Yale. From: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com To: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 12:59:40 -0400 What did you do after graduating? From: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com To: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 13:07:29 -0400 After graduating I was married to Paola, acquired emigration papers as part of the white Kenyan quota and entered the US across the Canadian border in 1956 learning as much as I could. I was taught at Yale by US graphic designer, Paul Rand, and the artist Josef Albers. I also arranged visits to other designers such as Robert Brownjohn, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar in New York. I even won a commission design a cover for Leo Lionni, art director of Fortune magazine, then a showcase for modern design and a client at top of every aspiring graphic designer's wish list. After graduating from Yale, I set off for Latin American but stopped off in Los Angeles hoping to earn money to finance the trip. Then I phoned the designer Saul Bass from the bus station and worked as his assistant for a few weeks. Unfortunately my

Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I wife was pining for Europe, where our arrival coincided with a revolution. We returned to London. During a short stay in Italy, I had worked at the Pirelli design studio thereby enabling my eyes then started to work with Colin Forbes combining our work for clients such as Time and Life magazine and Pirelli with him teaching me for more than one day a week. Two years later Forbes and I decided to formalize their working relationship and, with the US graphic designer Bob Gill who settled in London. Together we became the most fashionable designers in Baker Street. In 1963, me and a several of my peers set up the Design and Art Directors' Association or D&AD as London answer to the New York Art Directors Club. We worked over night to hang our first exhibition in the Hilton Hotel. the clients who came to see were impressed and the participating designers and directors were able to increase their fees by a considerable margin. From: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com To: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 09:08:43 -0400 what happen then? From: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com To: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 09:09:27 -0400 After the exhibition, Bob Gill left and the architect Theo Crosby arrived. W e hope that his design project for Shell extends from corporate identity into the structure of garage forecourt, another multidisciplinary commission that was a comprehensive design programmed for Reuters. I crafted an identity for them in a basic 84 dots to evoke the company's trade the logo survived until 1996. As we continued to expand as the partners took on more ambitions, often-multidisciplinary projects. In time Mervyn Kurlansky joined as a senior designer in the late 1960s and in his early along with Kenneth Grange, In 1971, I hit upon the idea of a Pentagram meaning

Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I a five-pointed star one for each partner after reading a book on witchcraft, despite the uneasy feeling everyone went with it. It significantly loosened the relationship between the company and the individuals a strategy that enabled the Pentagram long-term survival. spending two decades at the Pentagram the group grew from five to eleven partners and open offices in New York and San Francisco, as this was happening I maintained the most economic of the teams, usually employing between two and five people allowing me to combine large-scale identity projects.

Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I

 From: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com To: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 21:30:49 -0400 From: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com To: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 22:31:35 -0400 Yes, my portfolio was published in the monograph Beware Wet Paint which is a combination of carefully crafted logos and spontaneous graphic epiphanies. Nothing is heavy handed and the sketches and

Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I doodles demonstrate his ingenuity and charm. Much of my work from the periods survives. My logotype for London's Victoria & Albert Museum has proved to fit its purpose and transcended its era. Crafted from the typeface Bodoni, Fletcher's design creates a single unit from the museum nickname -the V&A- by allowing the serif of the ampersand to stand in for the bridge of the A. Although I would not have used Bodoni in that fashion in the early 1960s, the idea behind this design is consistent with my career-long approach. A similar logotype was made for the institute of directors in which initials are scaled to their importance a medium small O, a large D, and I. From: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com To: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 22:32:11 -0400 then what happened? From: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com To: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 22:56:36 -0400 Well in 1991 I have decided to leave the pentagram. Several of my important clients withdraw their business during the recession and trading at Kuwaiti bank had come to a halt when Iraq invaded Kuwaiti on 2 August 1990. After that I designed two dimensional material and environmental graphic features and as consultant and art director at Phaidon, I not only set high designs for its art architecture and design books, but also worked with a generation of younger designer as well as to tell a story by publishing my own book. that is all I have to offer you. here is some of my work if you are interested.

Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I

Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I

From: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com To: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:28:45 -0400 thank you for your time sir, and here is some of my work as well.

Jarae’ Thompson E-mail conversation between Alan Fletcher and I

From: alan_fletcher@hotmail.com To: werewolf_jarae@hotmail.com Subject: RE: Alan Fletcher Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:28:45 -0400 these are nice great work.