Who Was Tony Arefin?

On show at the Ikon in Birmingham at the moment is a retrospective of Tony Arefin. To be honest I had never heard of him which makes it more interesting finding out how extensive his back catalogue of design is.

He emerged in the 1980's as one of the leading designers of art publications for the likes of the ICA and the Serpentine Gallery. Described by the design critic, Rick Poyner as single handedly processing the print needs of the entire British art scene. The exhibition has some great early publications he designed for the Young British Artists along with some major corporate clients such as IBM and Nike.

He was born in Pakistan, later moving to Bangladesh with his family before coming to London in 1974 due to political unrest in Dhaka. He started his working life as a picture editor and design assistant for various magazines, a curator at the Photographers Gallery and then began designing his own catalogues soon after. He used to credit his work as being designed by Arefin and Arefin, a slight corporate pun to Saatchi and Saatchi.

In 1993 he left London to go to New York where he became the Creative Director of ID magazine. There are some great examples of some of his cover designs especially as he could exploit his vast knowledge of the then contemporary art scene. Shortly after in 1997, he was noticed by Wieden and Kennedy and became an Art Director in Portland, Oregon but returned to New York just a year later as a partner at Ogilvy and Mather where he produced the award winning IBM 'magic box' campaign.

Unfortunately his creative output was cut short in 2000 when he died of a heart attack. Looking at his work and the fantastic exhibition, you do wonder what he would have produced next. He could have been one of the great graphic designers of our generation especially when you consider his recognition within the industry.

There are some images of his work below but I also found a great quote which was printed in Emigre magazine in 1992:

'In an underground you don't have the notion of success or failure. You just have the notion of making something and that's what saves you. It's not how professional it looks, it's because you are doing what you are doing because you believe in it'.

The bottom three posters are my favourites. I can't find any better quality images unfortunately which is a shame because you cannot see the smaller text which puts the pieces in to perspective. They were for a safe sex campaign but at first viewing you take the image and main word at face value but it isn't until you read the text on the side that it makes more sense and gives you the full innocent picture.

The 'cheap' version actually says in full, Condoms are CHEAP, if we'd have used one I wouldn't have to tell my parents I'm pregnant. A great campaign and one of those campaigns that you wish you could come up with something as good.