• Skip to navigation
  • Skip to content
Jane Audas
  • Writing about historical and contemporary craft and design.
  • Digital work
  • Writing
  • Curating and…
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Search

Ship shape

22 July 2012

Orient line booklet designed by Edward Mcknight-Kauffer

It is no secret I like a bit of anthropomorphism. Put a face on it and I’ll probably like it. I wouldn’t really have expected an anchor to get this sort of face lift though.

This Orient line brochure makes the most of Edward McKnight Kauffer’s lovely smiling Orient Line logo. Kauffer was probably introduced to Orient Line work via his partner Marion Dorn, whose carpets graced the floors of the ship Orion in 1935. The anchor logo is hard to date though. Certainly it was all over Orient Line paperwork in the 1950s but looks earlier than that, design-wise.

Kauffer was one of an elite band of renaissance commercial artists of the first half of the twentieth century. He designed book covers and illustrations, posters, adverts, fabric bale labels. Indeed anything that stayed still long enough for him to illustrate it. He did lots of work for London Transport too, the graphic gig of that century.

Despite nice logos and leaflets, cruises have never really appealed to me. Travelling by boat, yes. Formally organised leisure time, no. This handbook describes the services available on board ship on the way to Australia, via the Suez Canal.

The trip took 25 days, one way. That’s a lot of sun and shuffleboard. And a lot of time to admire a logo.

Filed under: Shelf Appeal

Tags: booklet, cruise, design, Edward McKnight Kauffer, logo, Orient Line, ship

Share this!

2 Comments

Joseph May 5th, 2014

You write so beautifully about someone I really admire. Thank you so much for your Kauffer posts.

Reply
shelf appeal May 6th, 2014

Thanks for that, very nice to hear.

Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

© Copyright Jane Audas 2023 Maraid Design

Twitter Flickr Instagram

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}