Summer 2024

Phil Baines remembered

Friends and colleagues pay tribute to the influential British typographic designer, writer and teacher (and cycling enthusiast), who died in January [EXTRACT]

The November 2023 exhibition ‘Extol’ was a vivid opportunity to see the work of British typographic designer and academic Phil Baines. Held in the Lethaby Gallery at Central Saint Martins in London, where he was Emeritus Professor, it showed the breadth and generosity of Baines’s practice, taking in his student notebooks and cards, catalogues and identity design, type design, posters, public signs and memorials, research, books, articles (many written or co-written for Eye) and his striking student work. The main focus of the show was a spectacular display of Paschal candles.

Baines, whose health was declining due to Ataxia, was still able to participate in the show and soak up the love and acclaim.

Neville Brody ended a talk at the 2023 magCulture conference by urging everyone to see ‘Extol’. On the Eye blog, Quentin Newark wrote that Baines, ‘shows us how to revel in the joy of it all. Hallelujah.’

The announcement of Baines’s death on 19 January 2024 was a surprise – John Bodkin had already photographed his work in preparation for this article, and we had begun collecting memories from people who had worked with Baines, some of whom were unaware of the other strands within his life. Sentences written and spoken about Phil in the present tense were changed to the past.

The public tribute held at Central Saint Martins on 20 March 2024 was a real-time collage of snapshots and anecdotes, as students, friends, family and colleagues expressed their gratitude. Christopher Wilson, author of the Reputations interview with him in Eye 69, noted the independence Baines achieved in the way he conducted his life, work and teaching. CSM’s Judy Willcocks said: ‘If Phil was a stone thrown into the lake of life, we’re all ripples.’

In this article, Phil Baines’s friends and associates recall the life, work and influence of this much-loved, much-missed and extraordinary individual, with texts by Andy Altmann, Catherine Dixon, Robin Klassnik, Judy Willcocks, Alessia Mazzarella and Kevin Carmody …

Read the full version in Eye no. 106 vol. 27, 2024

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