Colin Forbes, a graphic designer who had a hand in countless logos, book covers and interior spaces, but whose most enduring work was perhaps essentially designing a design organization, Pentagram, which grew to worldwide influence from its founding in the early 1970s, died Sunday at his home in Westfield, NC, near the Virginia border. He was 94.
Michael Gericke, a current partner at Pentagram, confirmed the death.
Mr. Forbes was already a successful designer when he co-created Pentagram in London with four others. Mr. Forbes and his co-founders—Alan Fletcher, Theo Crosby, Mervyn Kurlansky, and Kenneth Grange—wanted something between a boutique company and a large Madison Avenue-style corporation. Mr. Forbes was the main architect of what they came up with: a partnership structure that balances independence and collaboration.
“As a Pentagram co-founder,” Mr. Gericke said by email, “he formed a unique structure for his intuitive and quirky partners to work as individuals, within a collective framework that has stature, collegiality and business acumen.”
In the first two decades of the partnership, much of the “business sense” of that equation came from Mr. Forbes.
“During these early years, those of us who were the first to worry about cash flow, the need for more studio space, or what might happen in five years was given the task of permanently planning the company’s progress,” wrote Mr. Forbes in 1992 in an essay for the Pentagram’s 20th anniversary. “I happened to be.”
The label on a limited-edition bottle of Jack Daniel’s, baking molds for the French brand Soufflé, the Great Western Railway ticket hall at London’s Paddington Station and the promotion campaign for Shakespeare in the Park in New York are among the recent projects in the expanded Pentagram portfolio.
mr. Forbes was also a fine designer in its own right. One of the examples Mr. Gericke cited was the cover of the 1979 book “George Nelson on Design,” one of Mr. Forbes’ first projects after moving to New York to open a Pentagram office. Mr. Forbes came up with a word-within-a-word concept that has been imitated many times since, which makes the “to” in “Nelson” double as a preposition by displaying it in red, while the rest of Mr. Nelson’s name was in white.
The logo used by Nissan for many years was also the work of Mr Forbes, and his designs for Pirelli, British Petroleum and other companies were well known in their day. His career has included significant expansion in the field, one with graphic designers moving beyond logos and book covers to consulting on interior spaces, corporate identities and more—something Mr. Forbes said he never envisioned when he graduated from the Central School of Arts. and Crafts in London in their twenties.
“When I came out, I assumed that if you could teach part-time and some book covers, that would be Christmas,” he told The Honolulu Advertiser in 1991, when he was in Hawaii to give a lecture. “So I never thought I could stand in front of Neiman Marcus’ board telling them how I could improve their business in Dallas.”
Colin Ames Forbes was born on March 6, 1928 in London to John and Kathleen (Ames) Forbes. He served in the British Army from 1945 to 1949, and initially had a very different career in mind.
“When I got out of the military in ’49, I thought I’d go into aircraft engineering because ‘aircraft’ was so romantic for people of my generation,” he told The Honolulu Advertiser. Instead, he took advantage of a veterans grant program and attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts, graduating in 1952. He taught at the school for a time, but in 1960 he had left for private practice.
In 1962, he founded Fletcher/Forbes/Gill with Mr. Fletcher and Bob Gill. Their standout work for Pirelli, Time Life, Penguin Books and others captured the spirit of the Swinging Sixties that transformed popular culture in London and beyond.
“As a team,” wrote The Independent of Britain in Mr Fletcher’s 2006 obituary, “they had the ability to combine the formal restraint of Swiss modernism with the humor of the Madison Avenue advertising industry.”
Mr Crosby replaced Mr Gill in that partnership in 1965.
Mr. Forbes helped start Pentagram in 1972. When he left in 1993 – he retired shortly after – he made sure that the structure of the company would keep it going, even after the founders were no longer involved. (Mr. Grange was the last of them to leave, in 1997.) Many small businesses don’t move past the first generation, but this year Pentagram celebrates its 50th anniversary, with 23 partners whose work permeates modern life.
Mr. Forbes’ first marriage to Elizabeth Hopkins in 1950 ended in divorce. In 1961 he married Wendy Maria Schneider. She survives him, along with his children, Christine Coppe, Aaron Forbes and Jessica Forbes, and three grandchildren.
Mr. Forbes was president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts for several years during the 1980s. In 1991, he was awarded the prestigious AIGA Medal, which recognizes exceptional achievements in the field.
“For the better part of a long and spectacularly successful career in graphic design,” according to a biographical outline prepared for the occasion, “Forbes has focused its tremendous energy on nothing less than designing the practice of design itself. makes him a designer of designers in a very special sense.”
