My friend Vanessa bought me ‘The art of looking sideways’ for my birthday a couple of years ago and it was an introduction for me to Fletcher’s work. It is a 533-page collection of “anecdotes, quotations, images, curious facts and useless information, oddities, serious science, jokes, memories – all concerned with the interplay between the verbal and the visual, and the limitless resources of the human mind” - a fascinating book with lots of inspiring ideas.
I always like the Design Museum and it was handy to find out that they are hosting the ‘Alan Fletcher: Fifty Years of Graphic Work (and Play)’ exhibition, which was an amazing presentation of Fletcher’s work and ideas. I loved his creative letterhead and logo designs, as well as the playfulness in his other work such as his A2Z boxes/drawers. It was indeed very sad news to the creative world when he died on the 21 September 2006.
My only discontent was that the exhibition wasn’t very big and certainly wasn’t big enough to give a good reflection of a designer as prolific as Fletcher. I am definitely going to read ‘The art of looking sideways’ again tonight.