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"Thank you very much for sending me a copy [of the book]. It was gratifying to go back through those covers–none of which has dated, but all of which are part of my memories growing up.
I also loved the note on Athol" – Michael Shmith.
Heyday:
World Record Club was at its best in the early years, from the late fifties right through to the end of the sixties.
The studio employed a stream of staff artists,
and a large body of freelancers — each had their own speciality: Loius Kahan for portraits of composers,
Alex Stitt produce highly decorated illustrations, Max Robinson produced detailed and powerful woodcuts,
John Copeland created stylised graphic illustrations, Lance Stirling's modern designs, Guus van Der Heyde creatively abstracted photography, Athol Shmith was at his best photographing models and musicians —
and the staff artists: Graeme Moore who worked primarily on the preparation of the direct-mail catalogues
also designed a large number of elegant covers, many featuring his own photographs, a number of
Swinburne graduates who studied under the charismatic Brian Robinson and Bob Francis — Keith McMenomy,
Winston Thomas, Tony Ward, Ian McGill and later, Paul Cleveland all brought that distinctive love of
illustration and decoration that was the hallmark of that period at Swinburne in the sixties.
Geoff Hocking, the author of 'It's Another World Record — Album Cover Art' had trained in Bendigo
and followed Tony Ward into the studio where he worked for two years before, like many others before,
he left to fulfill the comittments to a college studentship and entered Secondary Teachers College.
The World Record Club alumni has produced a large body of designers who also entered the world of
design education: John Copeland, Lance Stirling, Guus van Der Heyde, Keith McMenomy, Winston Thomas,
Tony Ward, Geoff Hocking and Paul Cleveland have all had influential careers in tertiary design education
at the University level, and art director Geoff Digby also acted for some time as a consultant to the Technical
and Further Education [TAFE] system.
Legacy:
The legacy of the studio is quiet extraordinary. It was one of the first truly independent design studios in Australia,
certainly the first dedicated to a single industry, where art and design was created for its own sake, whereas
commercial success was important to the survival of the company, the method of direct-mail selling meant
that sales were not reliant on the usual principles of instore marketing and art could take precedence over
commercial constraints. A very rare opportunity for designers, one coveted but rarely repeated.
Alumni:
Founding art director Geoff Digby was inducted into the Australian Graphic Designers, AGDA, Hall of Fame in Novembr 2008, a belated recognition of the inspired direction he gave to so many artists, many at the beginning of their careers, in the sixties.
The studio at WRC is still regarded today as one of the most influential studios of the period. The hudreds of cover designs created more than 40 years ago still stand today as classic artworks.
The alumni of designers, which also includes several other AGDA Hall of Famers, includes: Paul Cleveland, John Copeland, Bab Haberfield,
Geoff Hocking, Keith McMenomy, Graeme Moore, Verdon Morcom, Max Robinson, Athol Shmith, Lance Stirling, Alex Stitt, Guus Van Der Heyde, Tony Ward — and the writers Alex Berry,
Harvey Blanks, James Murdoch and John Pinkney.
Other visual artists who contributed works for reproduction on WRC cover designs include Charles Blackman, Albert Tucker, John Olsen, Roger Kemp and Louis Kahan.
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