To help celebrate the launch of The Book of Cal's, the DIA invited graphic designer and design educator Cal Swann to elaborate on his story as a designer and personal reflections on the second half of the twentieth century, a journey with the inevitable ups and downs, illustrated with samples of his graphic work.

Retirement in 2001 from the full-time workload as Professor of Design at Curtin University left time and space for that inevitable SAD Tour around this vast country (See Australia and Die). Happily, I didn’t die but carried on part-time teaching three units of typography for an online design institute until 2019. Writing and designing an autobiography was a personal commitment to keep the brain alive and hopefully in good working order. I devised three books, one of my early life while growing up in WW2 in the UK – a family history intended for my immediate family and relatives. Secondly, a similar size companion of the working life, again for my immediate family. Then finally, this codex is the active life of a designer over the last five decades of the twentieth century.  

Now in a different format (240mm square, and expensive) with the family news drastically reduced to occasional paragraphs as background notes for the main story, this publication is aimed at a wider readership and contains more general reflections about being a designer and educator in the second half of the twentieth century. It is amply illustrated with my design output, nothing extraordinary or significant about that, but reflective of the mainstream graphics of its time. I am a 'journeyman designer'—a reliable and professional bloke.

Neither is it a detailed technical history of those massive changes; it is merely one designer's experience and response to some shifting sands. The technology available to graphic designers through that time saw massive changes from the 500-year-old letterpress printing tradition I was taught in the 1950s, through dry transfer lettering, strike-on text composition, film and eventually digital composition – to the magic layout on a desktop computer. In trying to make sense of this innovative and chaotic period, I’ve kept to a linear timeline for my story and summarised those five decades under the following general headings:

1950s—Craft-based design ideas and British print traditions dominated the 1950s.

1960s—Shift to Modernism in the swinging sixties. The impact of the Swiss/International Style and the influx of practising designers into the art schools.

1970s—Introduction of research and evaluation in design and the integration of social and interdisciplinary influences in design practice.

1980s—Post-Modernism and the Introduction of computer-based systems.

1990s—Merging digital technologies, telephone, computer, web, and online learning with worldwide access to information. The merging of art schools into universities and developing theoretical frameworks for MA/Doctoral research.

The narrative moves from the largely passive art school apprenticeship model of being taught how to do it to a more independent learning mode with teachers attempting to be facilitators in a university context. Universities brought pressure to develop theoretical frameworks and post-graduate studies for what was once an entirely practical activity. Designers/academics were a result of such new developments. Art schools of the sixties were sometimes eccentric places, and I was once physically attacked by the Principal and Vice-Principal of one such UK south coast art school. Really.  

I now observe that from 1950 to the 60s, time-intensive 'apprenticeships' of young individuals working a whole week together among a sizeable peer group in a drawing studio, has largely disappeared. Students now hop into a handful of lectures each week and then work remotely from home, each submitting their work online and perhaps receiving feedback (online) from a tutor – if they are lucky. As one who helped to assassinate the traditional atelier system with the publication of 'Nellie is Dead’ in 1986 (a Sit-by-Nellie approach and see how she does it) and then entering enthusiastically into online learning early on in the digital revolution, I think that if I do come back in another fifty or a hundred years (as my Buddhist friend Hung promises me I will), I'll start an art school just like the one I enjoyed back in the fifties.

At least I got to savour the ‘Golden Years’ of art and design school teaching; the nineteen sixties and seventies were the best in freedom to take risks, invent design curricula and create learning environments that we thought appropriate for creative thinking. I've read that the nineteen seventies were the best in terms of the relationship between working hours and remuneration concerning leisure and family times (no 24/7 text and messaging technology) for a life thoroughly enjoyed. Given the current circumstances with the ever-present pressures of the dreadful gig economy, I thank my lucky stars for my time in art and design education. 

I also thank those lucky stars for our unique technology that encourages the compiling and production of such personal biographies that record the lived experiences of everyday people, that which allows friendships to be followed across the world and life-long learning to continue ad infinitum, it's an exciting time to be alive.

Cal Swann attended art school in his hometown at Leicester College of Art. Specialising in typography under Tom Westley, he gained the NDD and Full Tech C&G in Typographic Design in 1956. RAF National Service followed, and then quick career moves in print design, advertising agencies and lecturing took him to London and elsewhere around the UK. He produced his first book, Techniques of Typography, in 1969. An interest in linguistics was enhanced with an MA in Applied Linguistics, Lancaster, in 1986, resulting in his second book Language and Typography in 1991, also with Lund Humphries. 

Cal was Head of Graphic Design at Saint Martin’s School of Art in Covent Garden from 1981-86. His last position in the UK was as Dean and Professor of Typographic Design at the Faculty of Art and Design at Liverpool Polytechnic. 

He moved to Australia in 1989 as Head of Design at the University of South Australia, where he was awarded a Professorship in Typographic Design. He was then appointed Professor of Design at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia 1996 and launched the first online Master of Design in 1998. Still active in design and teaching, he developed and taught three typographic design units online for Virtu Design Institute until 2019.

Continuing writing and designing (and playing a little amateur jazz on vibraphone), he enjoys a relaxed retirement with his wife Sandra, about 50 km south of Perth.

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