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Romek Marber, 1962.

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Romek Marber (1965) •

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Romek Marber 1969

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Romek Marber obituary

Graphic designer who caught the mood of the 1960s with work for the Economist, Penguin and the Observer colour supplement

When the Economist magazine hired Romek Marber in 1961 to produce a series of front covers, the UK was introduced to a new design talent, one of those who would shake up the restrained visual landscape of postwar Britain. The Economist’s large circulation ensured that Marber’s designs reached a wide audience, catching the mood of the time and providing a fresh perspective on its major political and social events, not least with some classic covers on the tense relations between John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during the period around the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

As an emigre designer from Poland, Marber, who has died aged 94, presented a version of European Modernism that was distinct both from the traditions of English Arts and Crafts and from the more robust approaches taken by American designers to styling consumer goods. He came into graphic design in Britain when it was a fledgling profession being carved out by a small band of pioneers, and he was one of that band’s most influential figures.

Marber’s work at the Economist brought him to the attention of Germano Facetti, the art director at Penguin books, and in 1961 he was employed by Facetti to revitalise the cover designs of the Penguin Crime series. Marber’s revamp was based around three distinct characteristics: continuity with Penguin’s visual history, an underlying grid that brought consistency and clarity, and challenging images that were mostly dark and enigmatic.

That mix of historical continuity, visual clarity and graphic mystery made Marber’s designs an immediate public success, with retailers hustling to return their old stock in exchange for the new, better selling covers. Within the design fraternity the “Marber Grid” that he showcased with Penguin came to be considered a classic of its kind: sustaining a consistent series identity, it also allowed for the use of strong graphic images on each cover.

With the acclaim that came his way, Marber received new commissions that included design work for Nicholson’s Guides, of which the London Street Finder map books were the most successful in the series. In 1964 he was also given the role of founding art director of the Observer newspaper’s colour supplement, with which he established a vibrant new format that pulsed with images of contemporary life.

Marber was born into a Jewish family in Turek in Poland, one of the three children of Moshe Marber, a manager in a textile factory, and his wife, Bronka (nee Szajniak), who worked for children’s charities. In 1939 the family tried to escape the German invasion of Poland by fleeing to Warsaw, where they were cut off by a siege of the city. Marber’s father, who was on the Gestapo wanted list, escaped with Marber’s elder brother, Kuba, believing that women and children would be safe back in Poland. Not long afterwards Romek and his twin sister, Roma, were transported, along with his mother and grandparents, to the Bochnia ghetto to the east of Krakow.

One day, when marched out on forced labour, Marber returned to discover the rest of his family had been transported to the Belzec concentration camp, where they were murdered. Now alone, he managed to acquire, in 1943, a forged identity card and an escape route into Hungary. But his guide turned out to be a Nazi collaborator, who handed him over to the Gestapo, and under SS guard he was marched through the streets of Kraków to Plaszów concentration camp, then on to Auschwitz and finally to the Flossenburg and Plattling camp, where he was liberated by US soldiers in April 1945.

After the war Marber went over the Alps into Italy with the dream of settling in Palestine. But on hearing that his father and brother were alive and in the UK, he changed his plans, arriving in London in August 1946 to be reunited with them.

In 1949 the Committee for the Education of Poles in Great Britain awarded Marber a grant to study commercial art at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, where he enrolled in 1950 and met his future wife, Sheila Perry. He then gained a place to study graphic design at the Royal College of Art, where his external examiner, the designer Ashley Havinden, later offered him a well-paid post at the Crawford Advertising Agency, which Marber turned down.

Instead, in 1956, he took up as an assistant to the typographer Herbert Spencer and then two years later set up his own practice in Harley Street in London, which led to his work on the Economist, Penguin and the Observer.

In 1965 he also began to get work drawing up animated film titles, one of which included the design for a trailer for Peter Watkins’ 1966 docudrama about nuclear war, The War Game, which was commissioned by the BBC but banned from broadcast on any of its channels until 1985.

In 1967 Marber became consultant head of graphic design at Hornsey College of Art in north London while continuing his design studio work. The college was one of Britain’s most vibrant pipelines for creative talent, and within a year of joining he had become involved in supporting a well-publicised sit-in of students who were protesting about the way that art was being taught. He remained at Hornsey (which was incorporated into Middlesex University in 1973) until 1988, when he retired to care for his Sheila, who died the following year.

Later in retirement, Marber wrote an account of his childhood experiences during the Holocaust for the benefit of family alone. He sent a copy to his friend, the designer Richard Hollis, and Hollis immediately resolved to get the story into print for a wider audience. With Marber’s support, Hollis published the book in 2010 under the title No Return: Journeys in the Holocaust.

Marber wrote in the book that he found the thought of visiting his homeland “disturbing”, and that “however much I long to see Poland, I couldn’t go back”. Nonetheless, in 2015, when the first exhibition in Poland of Marber’s graphic designs opened at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków, he found enough resolve to attend the private view in person, travelling there with his partner of many years, the designer Orna Frommer Dawson. This was the first time he had set foot in the country since 1945.

In 2017 the Jewish Museum in London included Marber as one of 18 designers in an exhibition entitled Designs on Britain, and his work is now conserved in the design archive of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

He is survived by Orna.

• Romek Marber, graphic designer, born 25 November 1925; died 30 March 2020

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