D&AD

Michael graduated from University with a 1^st in Visual Art and Marketing, then proceeded to work around the world with eight different jobs in London, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo and New York. 

Aged 28, he decided to create his own company, johnson banks. Today, the consultancy is established as one of the pre-eminent European identity and branding  companies, regularly competing for projects against companies ten times its size and twice its age, with clients as far afield as Tokyo, Philadelphia and Hawaii. 

The success of the company has been reflected in the numerous awards that Johnson has collected over the past two decades, including 8 D&AD Pencils (one of them a very rare black one).  Dozens of his designs are held in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and both the Guardian and Independent newspapers have recently identified him as one of Britain’s foremost designers. 

Michael served on the D&AD executive board for four years before being appointed president in 2003, the year that his project to celebrate forty years of D&AD (Rewind) was commemorated with an exhibition at the V&A and a Phaidon book of the same name. His first book, Problem Solved, is now in its fifth reprint and he is working on two more.

In his few spare moments he edits the design blog, thought for the week.

Q

What years do you appear in the annual?

Apart from a strangely fallow year in 1996, I’ve been in the book about 40-50 times since 1992, I think. Must look that up.

Q

What, for you, makes a good idea?

Great ideas, for me, solve the right problem, are original and timeless. The ones that resonate most with people are when you all pinch yourselves and ask – ‘surely that’s been done before?’ When you find out it hasn’t, it’s one of the best feelings a designer can ever have.

Q

From where do you get your inspiration?

For at least a decade I hovered up every graphics book I could lay my hands on, but in my thirties the penny dropped that reading up on design just made you emulate other designers.

Since then, I’ve cast a wider net across art, architecture, product design, fashion, writing, cinema and music - and sometimes ideas emanate from this vast soup of stuff.

But an idea is just as likely to come from a chance conversation, a sign in the street or a science textbook – there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

I’ve noticed that one recurring theme is re-purposing approaches from something apparently unrelated – I once had a great idea for an annual report whilst attending an internet design seminar. Weird.

Q

What is your favourite piece of someone else's work and why?

When people ask, I always return to the work of three or four designers – Paul Rand, Tibor Kalman, Bruno Munari and Buckminster Fuller. If I had to single out one project, it would probably be a series of pre-school books (pre-libri) that Bruno Munari designed thirty years ago which are made from wood, cloth and plastic that contain no words, just holes, images and shapes.

They’re designed to excite and interest children through form and shape and texture and do it beautifully. I return to them again and again – living proof that a truly extraordinary idea can be done.

Q

What is your favourite piece of your own work and why?

That changes on a regular basis. I think certain projects like our Fruit and Veg or Beatles stamps are remembered by other designers, Major identity schemes like those for Shelter, the Science Museum and Virgin Atlantic get us noticed by clients.

As for my personal favourite? Well, this year I’m very proud of a set of maps we’ve just designed for the V&A which are tailored to 10 different individuals (so the Paul Smith one looks very Paul Smith, the Cameron Mackinstosh one very ‘theatre’, and so on).

Ask me again in a year and it will have changed again.

Q

Where did you study?

I did a hybrid and experimental double degree in Marketing and Visual Art at Lancaster University.

Q

Who gave you your first break or was your first mentor?

Luckily, the eternal examiner for one module on the course was Wally Olins. After graduating I was struggling to persuade anyone that employing a ‘hybrid’ person was a wise decision but luckily he took the gamble.

Q

How did you first get to know or get involved with D&AD?

I went to the awards on off-chance, as an employee in the late-eighties. I didn’t really understand it, I didn’t really know what made one thing pencil-worthy as opposed to another, but it obviously meant a lot to the people there. Through the haze of cigarette and cigar smoke, sitting at the back, I think I decided there and then that I wanted to try and do something good enough to win.

At the same time I’d begun collecting the annuals and through a friend of a friend bought an entire set – I swiftly became a D&AD ‘student’ of what had won, what hadn’t and what should have…  Even now I have people ringing me asking what year a particular piece of work featured, and who was credited, and so on.

Q

Give us one pearl of wisdom

I always say we’re on the lookout for the most interesting and unusual problems to solve, in the most interesting and unusual way.