Ken Garland: An entirely different perspective on "Touch"

Touch. A topic that will surely see many speakers refer to the Steve Jobs interpretation of the word over the coming days. Totally to the contrary, Ken Garland kicked off this year’s TYPO conference with an entirely different perspective on “touch”.

Ken Garland at TYPO Berlin 2013 © Gerhard Kassner
In his talk, Garland’s approached the subject with a visual exploration of what this word actually means to us. Is touch best visualised as a scene from Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam fresco on the Sistine chapel? Or, a picture of a a lion mother and cub. Or a picture of the touch of a loving parent holding the foot of a child? Or, a more poignant interpretation, the hand of a starving African hand, in the hand of a Westerner?

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Garland brought the audience through these, and a range of other images, in a captivating and genuinely moving talk that seemed all too short. The main hall was in total silence for this legendary figure of design, as the audience hung onto every word. And, except for one slide showing an image of an infant touching an iPad, the presentation was free of any reference to technology or design, which made for a refreshing start to TYPO, given the theme.

Ken-Garland-web

Ken Garland

Since 1962 Ken Garland equipped the British movement for Nuclear Disarment with a visual message and he became a devoted adherent to the campaign, that never earned him a single penny. In 1963 he wrote and proclaimed the The First Things First manifesto "in favour of more useful and more lasting forms of communication" and demanded “Reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication.” Garland claims for a ”society that will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesman and hidden persuaders”. After studying design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in the early 1950s, Ken became for six years art editor of Design magazine and official mouthpiece of the Council of Industrial Design. In 1962 he established his own graphic design studio, Ken Garland & Associates. He has contributed many articles to design periodicals in the UK, US, Europe and Japan and has also held lectures at universities around the globe, always outspoken, in person and in print. Garland’s photographic work has been seen in numerous exhibitions and books. (Photo: Ania Carson)

Text — Paul Woods