It’s a bit late this one.
Roughly a decade.
But in fairness, were you reading blogs a decade ago?
When I got into the business John Knight was a hugely influential figure.
His work was unlike anyone else’s at the time.
It didn’t follow the conventions of the day.
Always visually arresting, original and often not like advertising at all.
“His best work never got made. It was too radical and unusual” – Malcolm Gaskin, John’s former Creative Director at TBWA.
But trying to find examples to show here I was shocked at how little was out there. Barely any in the awards annuals.
“Like many who do truly ground breaking work rarely win awards. It tends to split awards juries and therefore do badly. John’s suffered a lot from that.” – Sir John Hegarty, also John’s former boss at TBWA.
These Banks’s posters for example, ran in the late seventies.
If they ran tomorrow they would still be the most contemporary on the street.
Clever when they are all about being old fashioned.
Typographer Geoff Halpin, who worked with John on many campaigns including the one above and this one below for Evian, said that John had persuaded the fine artist Allen Jones to produce the water colours for the campaign, but the client wouldn’t pay his fees. Shame.
A fantastic image shot by Bob Carlos Clarke for Singapore Airlines.
(According to Malcolm Gaskin John managed to persuade the client to go with his new layouts with the logo at the top by telling him that ‘all your planes are up not down so should your logo be’.
Kawasaki. Very unusual for the period.
This Vespre ad is very straight looking compared to most of Johns stuff, but what a great idea to get over how slim the towels were – slip one into the magazine
Anyone who can persuade David Hockney, Dame Elizabeth Frink and Edward Poalozzi to grubby their mits by taking on a commission for advertising deserves some kind of award.
How can you avoid engaging with these charming ads.
John had a sideline in packaging and label design.
At the time it would have been more forgivable to the advertising community to deal crack cocaine than get involved in ‘design’. This is the only one I could find, not great but just the doing it was very unusual.
The Beefeater campaign still looks amazing.
Thanks mainly to Brian Griffins wonderful shots.
But also cropping the the shots at odd angles is not only unusual for the time but very hard to do without making the ad look naff.
There were loads of these but these were the only two I could lay my hands on.
McVities campaign using the non advertising photographer Lucinda Lambton.
These Quantas ads still look great 18 years later.
Copywriter Giles Keeble and John decided Quantas should own long distance travel hence the endline- ‘Quantas. Business Travel. Big on creature comforts.’
Giles told me that John took the first four lines of copy in the ad about jetlag, marked them A,B,C & D, then asked the studio to rearrange them to C,A,D & B.
Making little sense but mimicking the effects of jet lag. (Genius).
He then hid from Giles to avoid being talked out of it. Which he was. Unfortunately.
A 48 sheet for the Wolverhampton Brewery Hanson’s based on a couple of characters from Black Country legend. In the 1980’s 48 sheet posters didn’t look like this.
I love the way that most of Johns art direction comes so directly from that client or product.
It means that if the client doesn’t buy it you bin it.
You can’t put it in the bottom draw and wait for another similar client to come along.
Laura Ashley is a case in point.
The ads were literally made from the product.
The illustrations are all made from Laura Ashley fabrics, even the font was flowery.
Giles told me they used to blow up the ads as huge as window displays in all their shops and people would stop and stare in the street.
Mark Denton said this was so unusual at the time that he can still remember seeing the poster version of this ad now.
“Between Beckenham Station and Bromley High Street, above a cornershop on the right hand side. People didn’t do things like make headlines from the back of old motors.’
I love the way that John’s work feels like the brand or product it’s advertising.
Whether it’s the flowery font for Laura Ashley,
the pub signage for Banks’s or the light water colour doodles for Evian water.
They all have distinct relevant personalities.
And some of you may wonder what the fuss is, that’s common now.
But compare it to the big award winners of the period.
Black type.
Squared up picture.
White background. (Note to pedants: OK, it’s pink in the FT’s case).
Copy under headline.
Logo bottom right.
Perhaps this is why barely any of the work shown got into any awards annuals let alone won awards. Tracking it down was a nightmare. When this work was done if your ads were too ‘frivolous’ they weren’t considered real ads, they were just someone ‘goofing off’ or designing as it was known to them. Now even copywriters use design. The two worlds are merging into one. It’s communication. Why would you not use all the tools available. Here is a last poignant photo of John taken whilst judging shortly before he died.
P.S. Whilst tracking down some of the above work someone told me that when Alfredo Marcantonio gave everyone in the WCRS creative department a copy of his new book ‘Remember those great VW ads’ John threw it back at him saying ‘Don’t chuck your book at me, I’m fucking in it mate’.
Then I had to find if this was true, and which ad he’d done.
The one below stood out as the most likely candidate – it ignores virtually all the VW guidelines.
No logo bottom right. No squared up shot.
No car. After a bit of digging it turned out this was indeed the ad.
P.P.S. If anyone has anymore of John’s work they would like to add please send it to me at dave@dhmlondon.com.
