Culture Now: Richard Hollis

A lunchtime talk with graphic designer Richard Hollis, who presents a personal account of his work and its location in relation to shifting social, political and aesthetic contexts.

Since the early 1960s Richard Hollis has been at the forefront of discourse around visual communication and graphic design, through his work as a graphic designer, writer and teacher. As a designer who has worked for publishers, corporations, public and educational institutions, galleries, and in partnership with artists and architects, he has consistently emphasized close collaboration with his clients, and the effective and economic communication of message.

A unique understanding and synthesis of European Modernist graphic design and typography, specifically in the light of technological developments that have impacted on modes of communication through design, have marked his focused practice. Hollis designed the book that accompanied John Berger's 1972 seminal TV series on visual culture, Ways of Seeing, and a consistent undercurrent to his work has been the dialectic between the educational and ideological nature of the display of image and text.

Over the course of his fifty-year career Richard Hollis has accumulated a sizeable bank of images and material related to the history of twentieth century design, and his talk at the ICA draws on this material to present a personal account of his work, and its location in relation to shifting social, political and aesthetic contexts.

Richard Hollis (born London, 1934) is currently the subject of the touring exhibition Richard Hollis, curated by Emily King, that opens in September at Artists Space, New York, having previously been seen at Gallery Libby Sellers, London; ECAL, Lausanne; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

In association with Artists Space