Bob Gill (artist)

Bob Gill (b. Brooklyn, New York, January 17, 1931), American illustrator and graphic designer.

For his graphic design work, Gill has won a number of awards, sold illustrations to "Esquire", "Architectural Forum", "Fortune", "Seventeen", and "The Nation" magazines and has illustrated children’s books and designed film titles.

He played the piano at summer resorts in the Catskill Mountains, New York, to pay his school tuition. He attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art (1948–1951), Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1951), City College of New York (1952, 1955). 1954, he became a professional graphic designer in New York City. However, 1960 after an interview in a New York hotel room for a job in London, he moved there to work for Charles Hobson, a hack advertising agency, according to Gill, which was later sold to Grey Advertising (now Grey Global Group). He was very good at dealing with clients.

1962, Gill, Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes established Fletcher/Forbes/Gill design studio, the forerunner of Pentagram (design studio). More than 100,000 copies of the partnership’s book, "Graphic Design: Visual Comparisons" (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1963), were sold.

1967, Gill left the partnership and assumed independent freelancing again, including teaching, filmmaking and writing children’s books. 1974–1975, he returned to New York, proposed a so-called peace monument for Times Square, directed hardcore pornographic movie "Double Exposure of Holly" and worked with Robert Rabinowitz on multimedia Beatlemania (musical), which ran 1977–1979 (1,006 performances) on Broadway.

Gill has two children, Jack Gill and Kate Gill.

Independent, unorthodox and outspoken, he has also designed for Apple Corps records, Rainbow Theater, Pirelli, Nestlé, CBS, Universal Pictures, Joseph Losey, "Queen" (now "Harpers & Queen") and "High Times" magazines and the United Nations.

Teaching posts

* 1955–1960, School of Visual Arts (SVA), Manhattan
* 1959, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn
* 1967–1969, Central School of Art (now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design), London
* 1969, Chelsea School of Art (now Chelsea College of Art and Design), London
* 1970–1975, Royal College of Art (RCA), London
* 1972–1974, Horsley School of Art, London
* 1981, Parsons School of Design (now Parsons The New School for Design), Manhattan

Awards (partial)

* 1955, Gold Medal, New York Art Directors Club, for a CBS television title, US
* 1999, President's Award, D&AD (British Design & Art Direction), UK

Books written

* "Bob Gill’s Portfolio", Amsterdam: Wim Crouwel / Stedelijk Museum, 1967
* "Bob Gill’s Portfolio", London: Lund Humphries, 1968
* "I Keep Changing", New York: Scroll Press, 1971. | ISBN 0-87592-025-X)
* "Bob Gill’s New York", London: Kynoch Press, 1971.
* "Ups & Downs", Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1974.
* "Forget All the Rules You Ever Learned About Graphic Design, Including the Ones in this Book", New York: Watson-Guptill, 1981. | ISBN 0-8230-1863-6
* "Graphic Design Made Difficult", New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992. | ISBN 0-442-01098-2

External links

* [http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1991/?id=222 Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work]

References

* “Bob Gill” in Morgan, Ann (1984). "Contemporary Designers", New York: Macmillan. | ISBN 0-333-33524-4
* Baglee, Patrick (1999). “Bob Gill”, an interview, "Eye" magazine, no. 61.