Wednesday, 6:17pm
4 November 2009
Early adopter: Desmond Jeffery
St Bride hails the ‘non-designer’ who’s an unsung hero of British Modernism
![](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3489/4074546433_c0f1586fa4_b.jpg)
The most exciting graphic design exhibition I’ve seen in London recently is at the St Bride Library, writes Simon Esterson. But its subject would never have admitted to being a designer.
‘Late Letterpress: The Work of Desmond Jeffery’ features the output of a jobbing letterpress printer based in London and Suffolk in the 1950s and 60s. Although Jeffery hated being called a designer (he was a printer who knew how to lay out), he produced Modernist work that few English designers of the period could better.
![Desmond Jeffery – Political_p1](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2648/4074546725_6ff6babb56.jpg)
Above: catalogue for the Partisan coffee-house in London, 1959. Top: Red Paper, 1968.
Most of his work was hand-set in metal type. Jeffery was careful in his choice of typefaces: he was one of the first people in Britain to import sans-serif fonts such as Akzidenz Grotesque from the European typefounders.
![Desmond Jeffery – get out of Cyprus](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2478/4075300764_33045aa33c.jpg)
Above: poster, 1959.
He had an eclectic range of clients, from art galleries to the brewer Greene King and radical political organisations.
‘Late Letterpress: The Work of Desmond Jeffery’ is at St Bride Library, Bride Lane, Fleet Street, London EC4Y 8EE, until 13 November 2009.
![](https://www.eyemagazine.com/assets/uploads/Blog/2009/Early-adopter-Desmond-Jeffery/Late-letterpress_Desmond-Jeffery_StBride.png)
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