Abram Games design process

Naomi Games’s book Poster Journeys offers a fascinating insight into her father’s design process

to paraphrase the book : ‘Games refused to drive a car, the bus was his preferred mode of transport. He habitually sat on the top deck of the bus and doodled obsessively on a scrap of paper trying to rough out 6 designs on each trip. Back at home he would work the thumbnails up on his layout pad’ What great time management !!

He also confesses to ‘doing anything to avoid starting a final design’ So even the master suffers from stage fright !!

The star of the book is various rough and finished comparisons, a couple of which are shown here :

Oh to get to see some of his sketches !!

Toward the back of the book we see numerous attempts to capture the right feel for this tiling at Stockwell station : wonder if its still there ?

Plus Games website

http://www.abramgamesposters.com/War-Posters-1945-Posters/c5_10/index.html

and Guardian article

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/23/abram-games-poster-designs-in-pictures

Also found the following snippet at abramgames.com

Abram quickly and methodically filled a layout pad with two to three dozen ideas for a poster. Invariably two elements would be combined to produce a third image. Once he had selected a design from the thumbnails, he circled it with a pencil. He wasted no time covering large areas and avoided detail. ‘I never work large because posters seen from a distance are small. If ideas don’t work an inch high, they will never work.’ he said.

Showing his rough ideas to his wife, children and friends, he would ask ‘What does this mean to you?’ If they looked blank, he threw his efforts into a large dustbin and started again. When the final artwork for the poster was finished, he painted ‘A. Games’ in a corner. It hung on his studio wall for one week, inviting criticism from colleagues, family and friends. Only when satisfied, he would add a full stop after his signature.