News | University of Brighton Design Archives

Black and white portrait of Robin Day measuring a chair leg angle

Robin Day dies ages 95

Awarded Doctor of Letters by the University last year, one of Britain’s most distinctive designers, Robin Day, has died. The University of Brighton Design Archives house a great deal of material relating to the designs of Robin Day and those of his wife Lucienne who died earlier this year. From Robin’s 1948 success in the…

Black and white photograph of Anthony Froshaug teaching a class

Design Archives adds to the BBC’s recorded history

A reel-to-reel audio tape from the Anthony Froshaug collection in the Design Archives has been added to the BBC’s Sound Archive. The tape is a rare piece of surviving documentation, made by the BBC, of ‘Painting Recital’, a performance event at Watford School of Art in March 1966, and includes an interview with some of…

Archive Litter Bins in ‘House of the Vernacular’ exhibition

Photographs of litter bins from the Design Council Picture Library are included in one of the major shows of the Brighton Photo Biennial. Selected by Martin Parr, the images form part of the exhibition ‘House of the Vernacular’, an installation comprising seven diverse collections of vernacular photography by commercial and non-professional photographers from around the…

Design Research Unit Exhibition

An exhibition focusing on the Design Research Unit opens tonight at the Cubitt Gallery in London. Covering the period 1942-72, it documents the work of the pioneering design organisation and its key players, notably Misha Black who is represented extensively in the Design Archives collections. This exhibition is the first to explore the history of…

An installation entitled 'Living Rooms', curated by Samuel Dowd, in place at the Permanent Gallery, Brighton. Dowd used the Design Council and Joseph Emberton archives extensively. These are both housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Samuel Dowd uses Design Archives

In its seventh year of operation, the Permanent Gallery in Bedford Place, Brighton, has inaugurated a series of artists’ residencies called Platform X. The most recent incumbent, Samuel Dowd, paid an early visit to the Design Archives in preparation of his ‘Living Rooms’ installation. Here he made intensive use of the Design Council and Joseph…

A colour photographs showing Dr Catherine Moriarty, Curatorial Director at the University of Brighton Design Archives, amongst archival boxes.

National recognition for Design Archives

The University of Brighton Design Archives have received national recognition with grants totalling £180,000. The funding, £60,000 in each of the next three years, has been awarded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). This is the first time Brighton’s Design Archives have received HEFCE funding and it positions the university alongside well…

A cropped version of a 'Future' magazine cover from 1958 depicting tins of paint, designed by FHK Henrion. Taken from the FHK Henrion Archive housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Beyond the Little Magazine

‘Beyond the Little Magazine: middlebrow print culture, ‘art’ literature and the formation of modernist taste in Britain, 1910-45’. On 14 July 2010 Dr Lesley Whitworth, Deputy Curator of the University of Brighton Design Archives, will be presenting a paper at this interdisciplinary symposium in the Department of the History of Art at the University of…

An original, collaged room layout piece showing a colourful sitting room setting from the 1950s. Taken from a set of original mixed media illustrations by David Knight (MSIA) created for the ‘Colour and Pattern in the Home’ booklet from the Design Council Archive held in the Design Archives.

Course success

University of Brighton Design Archives’ Digital Imaging and Media Technician Sirpa Kutilainen has successfully completed a Post-Graduate Diploma in Paper Conservation at the University of the Arts, London. For her final project she worked on a set of original mixed media illustrations by David Knight (MSIA) created for the ‘Colour and Pattern in the Home’…

A poster for World Industrial Day (2009) with the phrase "Don't throw anything away, there is no 'away'" made up of trash items. Designed by Van Orin Vrkas and Bojan Kristofic of the University of Zagreb, Croatia.

World Industrial Design Day

World Industrial Design Day happens on 29 June this year, and will coincide with the University of Brighton Faculty of Arts’ Research Festival. The event is organised by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) and was inaugurated in 2007 on the 50th anniversary of the organisation’s founding. The intention is to highlight…

A display showing a selection of oil and pastel paints from Windsor and Newton, a company for which Arnorld Rothholz designed the packaging for. Taken from the Arnold Rothholz Archive housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Arnold Rothholz archive display

A new Design Archives display, featuring a selection from the archive of the graphic designer Hans Arnold Rothholz (1919-2000), has been installed outside the Centre for Research and Development at Grand Parade. Arnold Rothholz came to Britain from Germany in 1933. He studied commercial art and display design at the Reimann School in London and…