Richard "Jock" Kinneir (11 February 1917 – 23 August 1994) was a British

typographer Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), an ...

and graphic designer who, with his colleague Margaret Calvert, designed many of the road signs used throughout the United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies, and British overseas territories. Their system has become a model for modern road signage.

Background

Kinneir was born in

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...

in 1917. He studied engraving at the

Chelsea School of Art Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London based in London, United Kingdom, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation. It offers further and higher educat ...

from 1935 to 1939. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Kinneir was employed as an exhibition designer by the

Central Office of Information The Central Office of Information (COI) was the UK government's marketing and communications agency. Its Chief Executive reported to the Minister for the Cabinet Office. It was a non-ministerial department, and became an executive agency and a ...

. He next worked for the

Design Research Unit The Design Research Unit (DRU) was one of the first generation of British design consultancies combining expertise in architecture, graphics and industrial design. It was founded by the managing director of Stuart Advertising Agency, Marcus Brum ...

, and then opened his own practice in 1956. Kinneir taught at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It o ...

, where he was head of the graphic design department. He also taught part-time at the Chelsea School of Art. Kinneir and his wife Joan had three children and seven grandchildren.

Career

Kinneir's first large commission was the design of the signage for

Gatwick Airport Gatwick Airport (), also known as London Gatwick , is a major international airport near Crawley, West Sussex, England, south of Central London. In 2021, Gatwick was the third-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the UK, after H ...

. He chose one of his students at Chelsea, Margaret Calvert, to assist him. When Sir Colin Anderson, the chairman of the P&O Line shipping company read about the Gatwick signage, he chose Kinneir to design a baggage labelling system for P&O. A702 - M74 and A74(M) Road sign - geograph

A702 - M74 and A74(M) Road sign - geograph

In 1957 Anderson was appointed chairman of the government committee formed to design signs for the new British motorway network. The objective was to produce signs that could be read at speed. Kinneir was commissioned as the designer. Kinneir and Calvert developed a new

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

for this commission, based on

Akzidenz Grotesk Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin. ''german: label=none, italic=no, "Akzidenz"'' indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print runs such as publicity, tic ...

. This typeface was later named

Transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...

. It was first used for the

Preston By-pass The Preston Bypass was the United Kingdom’s first motorway. It was designed and engineered by Lancashire County Council surveyor James Drake as part of a larger initiative to create a north-south motorway network that would later form part ...

in 1958. The original road sign maquettes (models) produced by Kinneir and Calvert for a presentation to the Ministry of Transport are now held at the St Bride Library, a print and typographical library in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. T. G. Usborne, the

Ministry of Transport A ministry of transport or transportation is a ministry responsible for transportation within a country. It usually is administered by the ''minister for transport''. The term is also sometimes applied to the departments or other government ag ...

official in charge of the Anderson Committee, then formed a new committee under Sir Walter Worboys to review signage on all other British roads, in addition to motorways. In 1964 Kinnear made Margaret Calvert a partner and renamed his practice Kinneir Calvert Associates. The partnership devised a code of carefully chosen shapes and colours that largely complied with the protocol proposed by the 1949 UN World Conference on Road and Motor Transport. Kinneir and Calvert then later completed other design projects. They introduced the

Rail Alphabet Rail Alphabet is a typeface designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert for signage on the British Rail network. First used at Liverpool Street station, it was then adopted by the Design Research Unit (DRU) as part of their comprehensive 1 ...

typeface for British Rail. They also worked for hospitals, the

Army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

and for other airports.

References

Design Museum - Jock Kinneir + Margaret Calvert, URL accessed 21 May 2017The Jock Kinneir Library, A creative and academic resource dedicated to the work and teaching of British graphic designer Jock Kinneir. URL accessed 21 May 2017Visual Arts Data Service, URL accessed 21 May 2017
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kinneir, Jock 1917 births 1994 deaths British typographers and type designers British graphic designers People from Hampshire (before 1974)