Photo: copyright © John Morgan studio, 2003
I knew John first when he was in the final-year of the Typography & Graphic Communication course at Reading University. He was one of a group of outstanding students who graduated in 1995, each of them going on to make notable work as designers. There was a visible energy in that class, of each one learning from and encouraging the other.
When he left Reading, John got a job at Omnific, Derek Birdsall’s graphic design studio in Islington. It was an ideal learning environment for him: working with one of the group of designers that came, in the 1950s and 1960s, to define modern British graphic design, and with clients mainly in the cultural sphere (book-publishing, art). Derek came from Wakefield and had some of the characteristics of the plain-speaking Yorkshireman; John was from Lancaster and proved to be a good match as an assistant to Derek. One of the others in that class at Reading, Stuart Bailey, came from Yorkshire too, and was able to fit into the studio easily when John was away. (At Reading, John and Stuart had talked about working together under the name of ‘the Northern Line’.) Working with Derek was also helped if you could join in the pub culture around the studio. I remember John sometimes asking for a mix of mild and bitter ales: a habit that was common in the 1950s, perhaps because of the erratic quality of cask beer then, and which he would have learned from Derek.
The project that eventually became the workplace at 115 Bartholomew Road started around 1996, when four of us (Peter Brawne, Duncan Kramer, Dan Monck, myself) began to look for a building that we could turn into working spaces. I was working from home and the other three had lost their shared workplace building in Dalston. At the end of 1997, after a long search, we found this derelict light-industrial building in Kentish Town, and the purchase of the freehold was completed in January 1998. Plans for an essentially new-build structure began to be made.
During this period of design and planning, I kept in touch with John. I can’t remember exactly when, but I would have told him about this project. He had begun to think of leaving Omnific and setting up his own freelance practice. Our workplace would give him a place to start, and it came with a certain spirit or set of aspirations that he shared. Already at Reading he had been touched by the ideas of Norman Potter’s book What is a designer, which I had published in a second edition in 1980 – the start of my imprint Hyphen Press. Potter’s book outlines the ideals of self-organized groups, of mutual aid, of socially engaged design, of tempered and controlled machine production in small workshops, of ‘good work’ (the phrase comes from the architect W R Lethaby). In what proved to be the final months of his life, I had introduced Norman to Dan and Duncan (he was impressed), and his ideas helped us to formulate the plan of this workplace. I once joked about calling it ‘Potter House’.
In the period of waiting, Peter took a desk within Simon Esterson’s studio, then in Hoxton Square, so when we started the final phase of building there were just three of us – and then in February 2000 John joined the group. Suddenly the idea of this workplace became generalized. It was no longer old friends fulfilling their dream. John was from a younger generation, and he had a lot of assurance, of adventure, of oomph, while also being quiet and thoughtful. So the four of us became directors of the company that would secure a loan to finish the building, and then run it. At our first directors’ meeting, in a pub down the road from our building, we lit cigars (was smoking in pubs still allowed then?). I imagine that this was John’s idea – cigars were what company directors smoked. Another of his amusements: setting up his studio, he bought some things from Morgan’s, the stationery shop in Kentish Town. He told them his family name and asked if this would qualify him for a discount. The shopkeeper gave him one.
In April 2002 the first members of the building moved in, and in October of that year it was officially opened with a party. John shared one of the smallest units (unit 3) with Jack Schulze. Stuart Bailey had a desk upstairs in another unit. Quite soon John’s practice began to grow. He began to work with an assistant. Although he was always in the building, we saw less of him. He had reached the stage of needing more space and more assistance. So he moved out and on to develop what became a distinguished practice.
The years that followed were busy for me as well as for John, and I almost lost touch with him – though was of course aware of some of what he was doing. I remember especially his design of AA Files, his work for the architects 6a, and his work for Raven Row. We had a common friend in the Swiss typographer and book designer, Jost Hochuli, who had spotted John’s gifts and qualities (and I believe recommended him for his professorship in Düsseldorf).
What was the quality of his work? In an article of 2012, John Walters was perceptive in noticing the two streams there: orderly and wild, almost like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This does help to explain his special quality as a designer and as a human being. But rather than being a split personality, he had the gift of fusing these two elements – the Apollonian and the Dionysian – into one developing entity.
Last year we heard that John had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and wouldn’t have long to live. It was, and always will be, hard to accept that such a genuinely creative life could be brought to an end so soon.
Robin Kinross