Abram
Games - 'Air Mail'
Unpublished Poster 1935
©
Estate of Abram Games
Abram
Games was born in Whitechapel in the East End of London
on the day that World War I began in 1914. He belonged
to the golden age of British graphic design when the commercial
artist produced hand crafted concepts in the days before
corporate design agencies devoured the individuality of
the graphic designer. As a freelance commercial artist
he produced posters for an astonishing list of clients
that included Shell, London Transport, BEA, BOAC, Guinness,
The Royal Shakespeare Company, London Zoo, The Metropolitan
Police, The Times and The Financial Times.
Maximum
Meaning, Minimum Means
Abram
Games 'Air Mail' poster of 1935 incorporates the main
elements of his design philosophy: a perceptive combination
of image and text that communicates a concept with ‘maximum
meaning' using 'minimum means’. His
discovery of the initials of the product, the letters
'A' and 'M', within the structure of the envelope is typical
of Games' nimble wit. He cleverly extends this metaphor
by incorporating the blue air mail sticker as the letter
'i' in 'Mail'. Then, when faced with the problem of balancing
the light letters of the word 'Air' against the dark letters
of 'Mail', he creates a tonal counterchange by using a
drop shadow in the background. Not content to simply let
the shadow do this job, he develops its shape to suggest
a bird's wing, which in turn echoes the 'wings' logo on
the air mail sticker. Finally, he dynamically tilts the
entire design to emphasise the idea of flight. The whole
concept is conveyed by a stylish fusion of image and type
free from any unnecessary decoration.
Abram
Games' reputation as a graphic designer is based on his
ability to weave together layers of ideas with a great
economy of means.
He realised that if you combine several images in one
iconic design, the result involves the spectator in a
visual game to unravel the layers of meaning within. Games
explained, "A poster with a measure of intrigue
engages the mind of the spectator and he looks again.
You have to take him along with you so he follows your
line of thought. The best way I can describe what happens
is to say that as the designer you wind the spring, and
it is released in the mind of the viewer."
The
Influence of Surrealism
Salvador
Dali
Apparition
of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach
(Oil
on canvas,1938)
Wadsworth
Atheneum, Hartford, CT, USA.
Many
of Abram Games' designs are visual puns with several layers
of meaning. They were influenced by the metamorphosis
of images and ideas that he saw in Surrealist art, particularly
in the work of Salvador Dali. In 'Apparition
of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach', Dali creates a coherent
image that conveys those fractures of time and place that
we experience in the landscapes of our dreams: the landscape
of sand and rocks become a table top with a bowl of fruit
which is also a human face; the rocks in the foreground
combine with the distant landscape to form a dog whose
collar is the bridge that links them.
Dali's
images are designed to unlock our subconscious and free
our imaginations. It is the clarity of
their technique and coherence of their
composition that make them acceptable to our senses.
What Abram Games realised was that this approach could
also be applied to his posters to increase their interaction
with their audience.
Games'
poster 'Use Spades - Not Ships' perfectly illustrates
how he adapts Surrealist techniques to maximise the communication
of his message.
Abram
Games - 'Use Spades - Not Ships' 1942
©
Estate of Abram Games
'Use
Spades - Not Ships' was part of the 'Dig for Victory'
campaign during World War 2. The poster was designed to
encourage British soldiers to cultivate the land that
surrounded their quarters. The aim of the campaign was
to make the country as self sufficient as possible as
merchant ships were being sunk with a great loss of life.
At
first Games struggled with the concept for the design
as he tried to construct an idea around the side-on view
of a ship. It was only when he realised that the poster
was a portrait format and changed his viewpoint to a frontal
view that he hit on the combination of the spade and the
ship. The marriage of these two objects created an icon
that met both sides of the message: the spade and land
on one side, the ship and sea on the other. The idea was
then developed across the horizontal and vertical axis
of the poster forming visual links from side to side and
top to bottom. The waves of the sea are cleverly balanced
against the ploughed furrows of the land while the shadow
of the ship at the bottom of the poster is echoed in the
shape of the clouds at the top. The shadow also combines
with the ship to create a figure of eight movement which
is a compositional device that is designed to lead your
eye around the poster. On a more subconscious level, the
spade/ship icon doubles as an arrow that points to the
message, 'GROW YOUR OWN FOOD'. Games breaks up this message
with colour which performs two functions - to emphasise
'YOUR OWN' and to create a colour link with the spade
handle thereby balancing the top and bottom of the design.
The
Icons of an Age
Abram
Games - 'This Child Found A 'Blind'
War Office Poster 1943
©
Estate of Abram Games
In 1942, Abram Games became an Official War Artist producing
public information and propaganda posters for the British
War Office. His designs from this period have become iconic
images that evoke the social history of their time.
During
World War Two and for a while after, children were occasionally
attracted to the sites that had been used by soldiers
for weapons practice. Tragically some were killed and
many were injured in accidents when playing with 'blinds'
- live ammunition that had been carelessly left
behind after practice.
Games'
poster on this sensitive subject cleverly addresses both
sides of the target audience: those responsible (the
military) and their potential victims (the public).
As an image the poster is designed to communicate both
on a conscious and on a subconscious level.
First,
Games uses a few images to relate the story on a conscious
level.
A
young girl lies dead in a red coffin, her head visible
through a cloud shaped window in the lid. Her coffin is
gradually transformed into an arrow that points to the
cause of her death - a 'blind' - in this case a grenade.
In the background, an explosion illustrates the tragic
consequence of her misadventure. A line of text that is
stamped at an angle across the image states, 'This
child found a 'blind' and completes the composition
by leading your eye back to the coffin. Finally the entire
design is underlined with two lines of bold text: one
issuing a warning, 'Accidents occur daily with blinds
left on ranges' and the other offering a solution,
'Report all blinds for destruction at the end of the
day's work.'
Next,
Games uses the basic shapes and colours of the images
to communicate the message on a subconscious level.
When
seen from a distance, the combination of the shapes of
the coffin/arrow with the grenade registers as a large
exclamation mark - ! - a punctuation symbol designed to
emphasise the message. Games always considered the effect
of his designs when viewed from a distance. He
began the development of each poster with a tiny sketch
and once observed: “I never work large because….
posters seen from a distance are small. If ideas do not
work when they are an inch high, they are never going
to work.”
Games
choice of colours, red, yellow and black for both images
and text are also designed to sound the alarm as they
are natural warning colours. Red is a universal symbol
of danger, while the combination of yellow and black,
both in nature and design, indicates a potential hazard.
Finally,
Games uses a counterchange between the tones of the images
and the graduated tones of their background to contrast
and balance each component part of the poster.
When
you first look at an Abram Games poster it is deceptively
simple, but every element is carefully calculated to communicate
the message on a variety of levels to a wide target audience.
Abram
Games - 'Talk May Kill'
War Office Poster, 1942
©
Estate of Abram Games
The
War Office started the ‘CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES’
campaign aimed at servicemen on leave and the population
at large. Abram Games' 'Talk
May Kill' poster
uses a variety of visual and psychological devices to
create one of the most powerful images of the campaign.
The idea was to dissuade soldiers from casually discussing
their official activities as intelligence about the movement
of troops could be gathered by spies with tragic consequences.
A
spiral which signifies circulating gossip travels from
the mouth of a soldier symbolically changing its colour
and shape into a blood-red bayonet, upon which three identical
dying soldiers are impaled. The viewer makes the obvious
connection. Again Games uses a tonal counterchange to
balance both elements of the message: the gossiping soldier
is light against a dark background while the dying soldiers
are dark against the light.
Not only does Games employ his red-yellow-black set of
psychological warning colours but he also creates a symbolic
colour link between the text and the action. The word
‘YOUR’ is the same colour of red as the bayonet,
linking the blame for the tragic consequences to your
actions. The words ‘YOUR COMRADES’ are the
same yellow as the colour surrounding the soldiers. This
not only reinforces your personal relationship with them
but also suggests another alarming possibility - mustard
gas - whose terrible effects still resonated in the memory
of those who lived through World War 1. The words ‘TALK
MAY KILL’ are coloured white to separate what is
the simple essence of the slogan. This phrase is also
split to maximise its contrast with the background.
The eyes of the soldier are deliberately shaded for two
reasons: to prevent any distraction from the spiral of
speech coming from his mouth; and to give him a general
identity, so that he may represent all soldiers. The inclusion
of the eyes would have given him a more individual identity
with which fewer soldiers would identify.
Games’
hand painted and airbrushed poster designs were the work
of a gifted draughtsman with a creative talent for combining
images and text to maximize the impact of their message.
He
once said of his work, “I wanted to create posters
with forceful compact design, memorable and direct, with
a minimum of lettering and text.... the message must be
given quickly and vividly so that interest is subconsciously
retained."
Abram
Games' Legacy
Armando
Milani -
'Translating War into Peace'
armando
milani
Abram
Games skills lie in his ability to educate and engage
with the public on a range of different levels. Designing
posters for the War Office gave him the ideal opportunity
to develop these skills free from the constraints of commercialism
and enabled him to create a body of work which has become
a fundamental influence on graphic design through its
visual intelligence and economy of means. If we look at
an example from one of the best modern graphic designers,
Armando Milani's perceptive poster for 'Translating War
into Peace', you can see that Abram Games' legacy of 'maximum
meaning, minimum means' continues to inspire creative
thought today.
Abram Games Notes
- Abram
Games was born on the day that World War 1 began in
1914.
