Embossed on the cover board of Beware Wet Paint by Alan Fletcher is the following paragraph:
“A marketing manager, resentful of being told by the Chairman that he had to see me, made his position absolutely clear. ‘I know nothing about design,’ he said; ‘furthermore I don’t want anything to do with it.’ He was kitted out in a chalk-stripe brown suit, a distressed-patterned tie, wore glasses the color of stewed glue, sat behind a tacky reproduction antique desk, and worked in a bureaucrat’s office to match. I believed him…and left!”
This anecdote will give you an idea of what famous graphic designers go through with some clients. Just like us! And from the Preface:
“Marcel Duchamp used the phrase ‘Beware Wet Paint’ to remind us that it takes time to judge the worth of work. This book looks at thirty-five years of Fletcher’s work: some of the most recent may not yet be dry.”
Fletcher, along with Bob Gill and Colin Forbes, started Pentagram in Britain in 1965. He is as close to being a graphic design god as you can get. This man was a true thinker and artist. He died on September 21, 2006, at 74.
To quote Steven Heller, “For Mr. Fletcher, nothing was as important as the idea.”
Beware Wet Paint is published by Phaidon.
