Abram Games exhibition

Maximum meaning, minimum means

We had a chance to visit a touring Design Museum exhibition of work by Abram Games, one of twentieth century´s great graphic designers, at Newport Museum & Art Gallery. The exhibition included poster designs, sketches, product design, inventions and interviews with him.

Games was a firm believer in simple design and strong messages. Even in his design process, he narrowed his sketches down to the perfect one that conveyed the message best. Being pre-digital era, all the work was done by hand, and Games often ended up designing even the typefaces himself.

One cannot but admire Games´ all-around enthusiasm for good design – he spread his expertise also to product design. The story goes that Games wrote to a coffee maker manufacturer to complain about the ineffective design of their product. The company wrote back to him saying that if he is not satisfied with their product, perhaps he should design a better one - and so he did. His Cona Coffee maker became a design classic.