George Daulby; graphic designer
Hyfler/Rosner
October 17, 2005
George Daulby: Designer whose work included posters, record
sleeves and television graphics
BYLINE: Peter Wildbur
George Daulby, one of the co-founders of BDMW Associates,
who has died aged 77, came on to the design scene during a
particularly creative period. The second world war had
recently ended, servicemen were returning to civilian life,
new magazines were being started and generally there was
acceptance that things must change at every level. There was
also an unspoken idea that design in all its aspects was a
positive source for social renewal.
George was born in Richmond, Surrey, and educated at
Chiswick County school, from where he went to Twickenham Art
school studying interior design. In 1948, after two years'
national service, he attended St Martin's School of Art and,
from 1950, was a student at the Central School of Arts &
Crafts interspersed with working in several advertising
agencies. He returned to the Central in 1953 to study
typography, perceiving that typography must form the
structural foundation for graphic design.
This was the period when metal type was in widespread use in
the printing industry and George, as with many other
students, was captivated by the physical process of
mastering the skills of hand setting, so much so that he
bought himself a "table-top" Adana printing press and a set
of wooden type trays to hold the individual characters. Many
of his later typographical designs show the influence of
this early craft experience.
George Daulby, Derek Birdsall, George Mayhew and myself got
together in 1959 to form BDMW Associates after being offered
the top floor of Balding & Mansell's Bloomsbury Place office
just across the road from the Central, setting up office
shortly after the start of Fletcher Forbes Gill, the first
of the post-war design groups. The deciding factor in our
formation was the winning of a contract from, what was then,
the British Iron & Steel Federation to design all their
documents and publications.
BDMW took on a wide range of design work from the simple
letterheading for a start-up company to the planning and
implementation of corporate identities. George's projects
included posters for Sadler's Wells, catalogues for
Interiors International as well as book covers for Penguin
Books and a range of record sleeves.
I believe that it was George Mayhew who was the first in
BDMW to carry out graphic work for BBC Television in the
mid-1960s, but George Daulby was soon drawn into the
comparatively new medium and found the experience much more
compelling than the rather long drawn-out process of
designing for print. The organisation of television graphics
in pre-computer days required split-second timing and a fair
degree of improvisation in the studio, all of which George
enjoyed immensely.
Despite the attraction of the television studio, George
never lost his interest in designing for print and he was
particularly interested in designing complete books. One of
his most accomplished was a collaboration with Edward de
Bono for The Greatest Thinkers (Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1976). It combined George's characteristic typography with a
number of freehand drawings surely inspired by his
television graphics.
In the late 1950s, George and I were appointed graphic
design consultants by Signa, set up in Dublin in 1958. It
was a period when the designer was almost unknown in that
country and there was no teaching of design in the art
schools. We undertook a wide range of projects for Signa, in
addition to our BDMW work. George, a natural communicator,
got on well with Signa's Irish clients, which ranged from
the Irish Tourist Board, to the James Joyce Tower Museum and
PJ Carroll, the cigarette manufacturer.
After his freelance work for the BBC, George joined the
corporation full-time and took an active role during the
next 12 years developing the graphics for a whole range of
programmes including several general elections, Newsnight,
the Money Programme and for a number of current affairs
programmes.
He was compelled to retire early from the BBC in 1983 due to
cancer, but he made a remarkable recovery and was able to
resume part-time work.
George is survived by his wife Lesley and by two sons and
two daughters.
George Daulby, graphic designer, born April 6 1928; died
August 31 2005