ABRAM GAMES POSTER BOY
The distinctive work of AbramGames is being showcased in a major exhibition
DE S I G N E R A B R A M Games, best known for his war posters and iconic illustrations for the London Underground, was posthumously honoured earlier this year when the Royal Mail chose him as one of 10 “Remarkable Lives” from those born in 1914 to appear on a stamp. Now the Jewish Museum in Camden is marking the centenary of Games’s birth with a major exhibition, bringing memories flooding back to his daughter, Naomi, as she peruses the exhibits ahead of next week’s opening.
Games, who died i n 1996, was a product of London’s East End. His parents Joseph, a photographer, and Sarah were immigrants from Russia. The exhibition includes many of his personal effects, including family photos taken by Joseph Games and the airbrush that Games used — passed on by his father, probably as a barmitzvah present.
In one section of the exhibition, there is a recreation of his workplace, complete with easel, the smock he wore for painting, which was made by his mother, his art materials and his pipe. He had worked only briefly for a company before going freelance and his studio was attached to the family home in Golders Green.
“The studio was always freezing, even in summer,” his daughter recalls. “He kept it cold because it concentrated the mind. It was very clean. he swept it or we swept it every day. There was an article about his studio where he was quoted as saying: ‘A tidy workplace makes for a tidy mind.’ He didn’t like anyone around him in the morning so always brought his wife, Marianne, breakfast in bed so she would keep out of the kitchen. He made coffee in the Cona Coffee Maker he designed, then, when we were all at school, he worked and he didn’t stop working, working through the night if he had a deadline to meet. When we came home from school with friends, he would go crazy if he was concentrating and lock us out of the studio. Or if he was in a good place as far as the work went, he would invite us in.”
G a me s w o u l d a l ways s t a r t hi s designs on a small scale. “He would s c r i b b l e o n scraps of paper that he kept in his wallet. He often worked onbusesand tubes. He never drove. He would fill a sheet of layout paper with different ideas. When he thought a design would work, he would circle it with a red pencil. That first design was an inch high. He always said that posters were seen from a distance. If they don’t work an inch high, they will never work large. His ethos was to keep everything as simple as possible.”
Clients were only ever shown one final idea. “If they didn’t like it, they would have to get another designer.” But when the idea was accepted, he would work it up into poster size, frame it and then seek the views of friends and family. “He would ask us: ‘What does this mean to you?’ If it was simple enough for us kids to understand, then he would sign his name — and if he put a full stop after his name, it meant the design was complete.”
Given his dependence on public transport, it is perhaps fitting that some of Games’s best known designs were for London Transport, for which he was first commissioned in 1937, going on to produce 18 works.
Naomi Games — who is one of the exhibition curators, as is her brother, Daniel — studied graphic design herself and was one of very few people to work with her father. “He was very difficult,” she admits. “When he tried to teach me something, I lasted half-an-hour and then I was in tears. But as time went on, the computer came in and typesetting changed, I would do his typesetting on the computer, so he acknowledged that it was a good tool. Then his eyesight got very bad and he had a very shaky hand, so I would touch up all his working drawings. And I always did the Letraset but I never interfered with his designs.”
She also completed his last design, for Naima Jewish School, in accordance with her father’s deathbed wish. This is also among the Jewish Museum exhibits. “He kept stressing the way he wanted the curve in the design, telling me: ‘You have to get it absolutely right.’ I replied: ‘I am going to do it after you are gone. I can’t do it with you still here because you are not going to be happy.’ I was so nervous I did it five times and then thoughtenoughwas enough.”
If her father was “crazy and volatile”, her mother was “very perceptive and very calm. She softened him up a lot. She was a good housewife and a fantastic cook.” Look closely at the poster he was designing
‘HIS STUDIO WAS FREEZING. IT CONCENTRATED THE MIND’
when he met his wife-to-be — exhorting people to knit socks for soldiers — and you can see “For Marianne” in tiny writing on one skein of wool. She also influenced one of his most famous designs. “He won a competition for the Festival of Britain symbol. He submitted a first design showing Britannia and they said: ‘Can you make her more festive?’ He was sitting at his desk overlooking the garden and he saw my mother hanging out the washing. And then he added bunting to the design.”
The Naima School poster was the
final example of his work for Jewish organisations, which accounted for around a fifth of his output. He once reflected: “I do my best work for Jewish causes and they give me the most trouble.” He often did communal commissions for free. “He also did a lot of work for the new state of Israel and in 1956 he went and taught Israeli designers how to use photogravure machines to make stamps,” his daughter remembers.
“Designing a stamp came naturally to him because of their small size. He designed a lot of stamps for Israel and a few for Britain, including one to celebrate the 1948 Olympics.” The exhibition also includes a selection of covers he designed for JC Rosh Hashanah editions as well as a myriad of emblems (he hated the word “logo”) produced for Jewish organisations, many incorporating a star of David used in ever more creative ways.
He also used the star of David on his gravestone. “In 1988, when he knew my mother was dying, he designed a gravestone for them both. Their initials A and M combine together to form a star of David.”
What is her favourite design? “One day, my dad was being very generous and said he wanted to give us kids a poster each and asked us which one we would like. Daniel chose the Guinness G. [My sister] Sophie chose the London Transport poster of a tiger as the name of her daughter, his first grandchild, is hidden in it. I thought, ‘I like them all but I will pick the one
GAMES DESIGNED MANY STAMPS FOR ISRAEL
that is the most valuable’, so I picked the ATS girl. It is worth the most money because it was withdrawn after five weeks and, as a result, there are very few copies.”
Guinness G was one of three posters Games wanted to be remembered by, along with the wartime “Your Talk May Kill Your Comrades” and the humanitarian “Freedom from Hunger”. In his words: ‘If I can say I designed three good posters, it is enough.” Designing the 20th Century: Life and Work of Abram Games, is at the Jewish Museum from September 8 to January 4