Peter Grundy revolutionized how information is presented through his illustrative approach to information graphics. As one half of design duo Grundy and Northedge, and later as Grundini, he created iconic visualizations that blended visual and verbal imagination to enhance the integrity of information in a memorable way. Though his work remains contemporary, Grundy's journey in illustration and graphic design began in an era when design was still considered a craft, and necessity drove him and his partner to invent unique drawing styles to bring their ideas to life within small budgets.
(Alber-Reihe Philosophie.) Fichte, Johann Gottlieb_ Gentile, Andrea_ Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich_ Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von - Bewusstsein, Anschauung Und Das Unendliche Bei Fichte, Sc
Peter Grundy revolutionized how information is presented through his illustrative approach to information graphics. As one half of design duo Grundy and Northedge, and later as Grundini, he created iconic visualizations that blended visual and verbal imagination to enhance the integrity of information in a memorable way. Though his work remains contemporary, Grundy's journey in illustration and graphic design began in an era when design was still considered a craft, and necessity drove him and his partner to invent unique drawing styles to bring their ideas to life within small budgets.
Peter Grundy revolutionized how information is presented through his illustrative approach to information graphics. As one half of design duo Grundy and Northedge, and later as Grundini, he created iconic visualizations that blended visual and verbal imagination to enhance the integrity of information in a memorable way. Though his work remains contemporary, Grundy's journey in illustration and graphic design began in an era when design was still considered a craft, and necessity drove him and his partner to invent unique drawing styles to bring their ideas to life within small budgets.
Peter Grundy revolutionized how information is presented through his illustrative approach to information graphics. As one half of design duo Grundy and Northedge, and later as Grundini, he created iconic visualizations that blended visual and verbal imagination to enhance the integrity of information in a memorable way. Though his work remains contemporary, Grundy's journey in illustration and graphic design began in an era when design was still considered a craft, and necessity drove him and his partner to invent unique drawing styles to bring their ideas to life within small budgets.
Information graphics are often dry and uninviting.
But by adopting an illustrative approach, Peter Grundy – 3
first as one half of design duo Grundy and Northedge,
and latterly as Grundini – revolutionised the way information is presented. No more PowerPoint pie charts or dreary graphs. In Grundy’s visionary reworking of statistics, the facts come to life as if animated.
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INTEGRITY OF THE INFORMATION. ‘Explaining things’ is modest, information designer language for a genre whose cardinal sin is self-expression, ‘show’ and flash. In the world of information design the tradition is that everyone is a Roundhead, the Cavaliers can go For newspaper editors and advertisers, to hell. A critic of their work quoted in Graphis information design is often used as a sweetener magazine would later say, ‘Though trumpeted – a little bit of sugar that helps us digest the as “intellectually coherent” their diagrams are information that we know is really good for us cumbersome, wasteful and lacking in logic, but which we can’t always be bothered with. economy and accuracy.’ In information design, Yet great information designers take information, thou shalt not waste. data and raw numbers, and hang some Yet ‘explaining things’ doesn’t really explain humanity on them. Alexander Isley’s info-satire the visual scale of Grundy and Northedge. for Spy Magazine in the 1980s; Tibor Kalman’s They invented an iconic language, a style that info-polemics for Colors in the 1990s; and blurred the boundaries between visual and Peter Grundy and Tilly Northedge’s info-iconic verbal imagination, and did it in a way that work over the past two decades. Tilly Northedge enhances the integrity of the information. has gone off to pursue passions beyond data- ‘The first job we ever did was a cover for crunching and visualizing, but Peter Grundy is Design magazine,’ says Grundy. ‘We produced still putting pictures on data. a book based on a black and white booklet Reading The Guardian on the train to his we’d done at the Royal College of our work, Brentford work/living space there’s a spread of because we had done some projects together. his recent work for Shell, part of a big There was one project – how to tie a bow-tie, 5 campaign that looks like an ongoing showing various ways in which you could tie one re-positioning of the oil company for using creative instructions, like back-to-front consumers, and in a sense for Shell instructions you stuck on your front, and we sent 6 themselves, as climate change or not, that out.’ The choice of a bow-tie is inspired oil is running out and we need a new because it is an iconic object, because tying one energy source quickly. The ads have the Grundy is a skill, and most of all because it is a tactile signature of bold shape and colour, driven by experience. As much as their work is informative an idea that talks to your intelligence and tickles it communicates by being solid, tactile and your emotions. It’s easy to forget as you are sensual. Art Director of Design magazine, drawn in by their warmth, engagement and Keith Ablett saw it and commissioned them to vitality, just how tightly edited these ads are. do a diagram for the cover, and they came up Great information design leaves no room for with a Thomas the Tank Engine scenario. messy thinking. But their idea of being able to come with the It’s why when I go into his studio I take off idea and farm out the work to an illustrator hit my shoes, and place them by the row of shoes the buffers of a £160 budget. ‘We thought we’d by the door. Grundy says don’t bother, but it’s do the drawings ourselves,’ says Grundy. ‘We more of a nod to the work than the man, that both had drawing skills, mine were pictographic taking off dirty shoes seems tonally correct. But because before I went to the Royal College I had 9 the idea that information designers need to be a been taught to be a Swiss typographer at Bath, little bit anal, obsessively spick and span, is and I was quite good at doing those things. But dispelled as Grundy makes coffee and then to cut a long story short the whole direction of roots around in a black bin bag on the floor for Grundy and Northedge over the next 25 years, some milk, apologising that he meant to go out was that the studio developed it’s own visual and get some. He assures me it’s fine. It is. signature because of budget necessity. We found ways of drawing. If we didn’t know how to do the drawing we invented ways of drawing. We would ALMOST A CRAFT still have ideas to solve the problem but we Though Grundy’s work remains utterly would use our drawing, our typography, to make contemporary his journey as an illustrator and these ideas come alive.’ graphic designer begins in an age when graphic design was viewed differently. ‘I think the nature of design in the late 1970s was different to what PHYSICAL, TANGIBLE WORK students have now,’ says Grundy. ‘I mean the In LSE Professor Richard Sennett’s work The 1980s hadn’t arrived. That was the period when Craftsman, a sophisticated defence of the design suddenly became a business, people economic and aesthetic value of craft that is not realised you could make a lot of money from it, anti-machine, Sennett writes, ‘the tactile, the it was still, almost a craft.’ relational, and the incomplete are physical Grundy and Northedge had met in the experiences that occur in the act of drawing. Royal College of Art in 1976, where Grundy was Drawing stands for a larger range of doing graphic design and Northedge was one experiences, such as the way of writing and re- of the first students on a new information design writing, or of playing music to explore again and course run by Herbert Spencer. The course was again the puzzling qualities of a particular analytic and research-intense, explains Grundy: chord.’ Sennett’s account of the physicality of ‘once you had acquired enough information drawing expresses the tangible quality of Grundy for a particular project you would use that to and Northedge’s work, something that is produce some design. Whereas on my course remarkably seamless even in the transition to we were down in the V&A doing advertising digital design at the beginning of the 1990s with briefs, they were up in Jay Mews next to the their diagram for Deyan Sudjic at Blueprint main building in the Royal College, gathering magazine. It was a piece on the evolution of information on shelving systems and then London, Grundy calls it ‘illustration journalism’. 10 working out the various ways in which a shelving And they did it on the page and on the computer. system could be assembled. I think Tilly felt the course didn’t really address creativity, so she kind of looked towards my course. It’s why we got talking because what interested me about her course was that it wasn’t about selling things. I was more into design that was about explaining things.’
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1 (page 7) Vodafone ad image, Grundini – 2007
2 (page 7) VW Save fuel Letterform remastered for the Grundini book, Grundini – 2004 Grundini 3 (page 6) Diagram explaining facts from a typical race meeting, Red Bulletin magazine, Grundini – 2008 4 (page 7) New energy futures, global campaign (ongoing) for JWT, Grundini – 2008 5, 6 (page 7) Poster, diagrams and icons for Shell International’s Scenarios division, Grundy & Northedge – 2004/5 7 (page 7), 9 Everyday things containing chips (Micro processors) Page in AR, Luminous Design/Arm Industries, Grundini – 2008 8 (page 7), 10 G2 Music Diagram for Guardian newspaper’s G2 section, remastered for the Grundini book with originally intended coloured backgrounds, Grundini – 2008 11 Diagram showing what was eaten in the court of Henry VIII for Hampton Court book, Wolf Olins/Royal Parks and Palaces, Grundy & Northedge – 2006 12 Commuter Page divider for the Grundini book, Grundini – 2008 13 Money and football Diagram for Guardian newspaper’s G2 Graphic spread, Grundy & Northedge – 2006 14 The arms trade Diagram for Guardian newspaper’s G2 Graphic spread, Grundy & Northedge – 2006 15 G2 Rubbish Diagram for Guardian newspaper’s G2 section, remastered for the Grundini book with originally intended coloured backgrounds, Grundini – 2008
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‘We did it as a piece of painting and we come up with a way of doing them,’ says did it in Adobe Illustrator just to see. We weren’t Grundy. ‘We had two months to come up with a quite confident it would work so we did both. concept because we didn’t know what we were And the two are exactly the same, funnily going to do. We worked with Leo Hickman, and enough they printed the painted one in the end, his sole job was to work with this and every because the printer preferred it – printers hadn’t week on a Monday he would send us a series of quite got to the point where they were happy 5 or 6 topics, and we would come up with an with us sending digital files. For the first 10 years overall image and that image would be divided we didn’t have a computer, the images we into coloured segments which would carry produced were done by drawing black lines on information. So the information he gave us was Kodatrace and then painting underneath and the actual information that got printed. There getting the printers to put the two together. was no editing. By the end of the week we We were drawing mechanically before we got would have to send a print ready Illustrator file. Adobe Illustrator and really what Illustrator They didn’t touch it, it went straight to the allows you to do is draw mechanically. It just did printer, who put it in the QuarkXPress document in a different way what we were already doing and printed it.’ using our hands.’ The turnaround time was intense because 16 The computer made life simpler, allowed it was illustration journalism, not just decorating for easier colour changes, but it didn’t change facts with pictures. Grundy and Northedge did the style. And some of that style is down to what alternate weeks for six months until a new editor Richard Sennett might call the ‘incomplete’, arrived and the job ended. ‘We didn’t want to the gap in our knowledge which stimulates do them to be honest, we’d kind of run out of understanding in the craftsman, which forces ideas.’ I suggest to Grundy that they must have the craftsman to think through the activity, been burned-out by the volume of work and the enhancing any physical quality. tight deadlines, but in his honest, matter-of-fact ‘The style was driven by our capabilities,’ manner (no surprise for someone whose work notes Grundy. ‘As George Hardie once said is the matter of facts) he begs to differ, ‘We’d when I gave a talk at Brighton, “I’ve known always been used to delivering. Part of the work Peter, since college and Peter was always doing I do and did, it’s always about delivering. I make things that were based on the fact that he sure that what clients get is what they need to couldn’t draw very well.” In a way I was get, and at the time they asked for it. We were simplifying things to make it possible for me to always quite disciplined about that.’ be able to draw them. In the end that simplification became the thing that people wanted. They liked the actual simplification, SQUAREHEADS I can’t draw figuratively. Tilly can. Her work is In 2006, after 26 years of being a designer and 17 slightly different to mine. When you look at illustrator, Northedge left to enjoy and follow her Grundy and Northedge you can‘t tell the two interests outside design. Grundy decided to apart but people who know us know that continue as Grundini, or escape into ‘Grundini’, there are differences.’ a fresh name and perspective, though one that goes back to his Royal College days. ‘Instead of answering briefs I’ll create my own briefs, and HOMAGE TO INFORMATION do things that I will show and sell. I’ll do ‘IF WE DIDN’T Back in 1996 Hugh Aldersey Williams, the then Editor at Large of Graphis Magazine did a pictures. One of the things I did before Grundy and Northedge finished was an KNOW HOW feature on Grundy Northedge and categorized their work into Pictograms, Diagrams and 18 exhibition at my agent’s gallery Debut Arts, it was an exhibition of heads, TO DO THE Narratives. Their pictograms, such as those for United Distillers are models of the art of and I did a set of posters which were called Squareheads and they were DRAWING WE 19 condensation, their diagrams such as the spread there for sale and that was their only for Creative Review on their carbon footprint purpose. I enjoyed doing that and with Grundini INVENTED WAYS turns information into knowledge, and their narrative work such as the there will be more of that.’ As he talks me through his Grundini book, OF DRAWING. 2 letterforms for the VW Save Fuel a self-promotion piece he is putting together, campaign, is a lesson in the aesthetic value of you realise that post break-up, he is making the WE WOULD STILL ‘the fresh’ in storytelling. But outside the work, keeping fresh began most of this opportunity for self-reflection; the self-promotional piece is not just a showcase HAVE IDEAS TO to become a challenge. By the end of the 1990s Grundy believes that Northedge had begun to but a chance to interrogate his own work. ‘I’m planning to do another book. They are SOLVE THE lose heart, especially with requests from clients who often didn’t seem interested in creative signposts for me to work out where I am going.’ He’s doing a lot of work for the PROBLEM BUT WE solutions. Yet ironically, in 2005, they began one of the most ambitious and exhaustive pieces of 5 Scenarios department at Shell which is a kind of futurology unit: ‘They call WOULD USE OUR information design in UK culture. In 2005 The Guardian pushed the boat them tools to allow people within Shell to think about the future. They DRAWING, OUR 13 6 out with its new Berliner redesign, and are not predictions they are a set of was looking to make a visual splash in parameters that you can apply to incidents TYPOGRAPHY, TO 14 its G2 supplement with some info- graphics. Guardian Creative Director that happen, like 9/11 or the current economic crisis.’ The assignment came to him via the MAKE THESE IDEAS Mark Porter knew Grundy and Northedge and recommended them to Ian Katz the G2 editor. late Alan Fletcher. ‘He felt they needed someone with more informational skills,’ COME ALIVE.’ ‘It was an homage to information’, says Grundy, who retells the story with a kind of wonder that says Grundy. On the way out he points up at a large PETER GRUNDY. they actually took it on. ‘Ian Katz said, “Can you series of posters by the staircase – The do them?” and we said, yes. How many do you Squareheads. Why squareheads? Then you need? He said, “We are going to do about 25.” remember, anyone can draw a roundhead, it And we asked if this was over the period of a takes real craft to draw a squarehead. uu year or two years?’ Grundy delivers the punch line with a wry laugh: ‘He told us that we were Further reading going to do one every week.’ www.grundini.com Given the scale of the task, it was as much www.grundynorthedge.com logistical as creative. ‘Our job was really to
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16 Action Aid poster
Grundini – 2004 17 Africa Image produced for the Grundini book, Grundini – 2008 18 Headcase Limited edition Squareheads poster produced for an exhibition at Conningsby Gallery, Grundini – 2003 19 Warhead Limited edition Squareheads poster produced for an exhibition at Conningsby Gallery, Grundini – 2003 20 Utopia Image produced for the Grundini book, Grundini – 2008 21 Sacred hand Image produced for the Grundini book, Grundini – 2008
(Alber-Reihe Philosophie.) Fichte, Johann Gottlieb_ Gentile, Andrea_ Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich_ Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von - Bewusstsein, Anschauung Und Das Unendliche Bei Fichte, Sc