To mark its 50th birthday, D&AD is delving into its archive to highlight significant pieces of work that have featured in the awards. CR will be publishing one a week. This week we have a groovy club identity created by one of the great, but perhaps now neglected, names of British graphic design, Negus & Negus

Time & Place was to add “a new progressive dimension to the night scene” in Manchester. Negus & Negus supplied it with an identity to match that ambition (designed by Peter Bentley, Michael Farrell and Stewart Burnett) which earned the studio a place in the 1969 D&AD annual.

Though seldom mentioned now, Negus & Negus was one of the pre-eminent design studios of the time. Its principal, Richard (‘Dick’) Negus worked on the Festival of Britain where he met Philip Sharland. As Negus and Sharland (founded in 1951) the pair originally found work illustrating magazine covers and posters, the latter usually commissioned by ad agencies. The studio enjoyed a particularly productive relationship with BOAC, the forerunner to British Airways.

During the 60s, Negus and Sharland began to be involved in the new world of corporate identity. In the early 70s, the office was renamed Negus & Negus as Sharland left and Negus’s wife Pam joined. The firm went on to work with clients such as the City of Westminster, the National Theatre, John Lewis and Rolls Royce.

But it was, again, in the airline industry that Negus & Negus really made its mark. For British Airways, the studio launched a new identity and livery in 1973

Photo: Bernard Lafond. Courtesy Logopedia

It went on to work with Pakistan International Airlines and Emirates.

PIA Airbus A300 bearing the Negus & Negus livery, photographed by Aldo Bidini in 1991.

Negus served as President of the Chartered Society of Designers from 1977-78 and on the Post Office’s Stamps Advisory Committee for 25 years. He died in 2011 (read The Independent’s obituary here).

Related Content

Read the first post on this series, on Barrie Bates’ 1963 A union, Jack! poster, here

And the second post, on Derek BIrdsall’s covers for Penguin books, here

And the third, on the Go to Work on an Egg ad campaign here

And on the 1966 British Rail identity here

1968 Doctor Who titles here

D&AD’s 50-year timeline of landmark work is here

The 50th D&AD Awards are open for entry until the February 1

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