Allan Fleming

Allan Robb Fleming (7 May 1929 – 31 December 1977) was a Canadian graphic designer best known for having created the Canadian National Railway logo, designing the best-selling 1967 Centennial book Canada: A Year of the Land/Canada, du temps qui passe, and for revolutionizing the look of scholarly publishing in Canada, particularly at University of Toronto Press.

Between 1937 and 1939 the young Allan was hospitalized in Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto because of an ear infection that required radical surgery and caused the permanent loss of hearing in his left ear.

He never forgot the trauma.

In 1939 Allan and his mother travelled to California as part of his recuperation; attending the Hollywood Premier of "The Wizard of Oz" formed an indelible impression.

Back in Toronto, he attended Western Technical Collegiate from 1943 to 1945 in the commercial art stream.

When he was 15, in 1944, his father died of bone cancer.

From 1945 until 1947 Fleming worked as an illustrator in the mail order-advertising department of the T. Eaton Company, and then until 1951 became a layout artist with Art Associates Studio and an art director with the advertising firm Aikin McCracken.

Fleming married Nancy Barbara Chisholm in 1951.

Working at the advertising firm Art and Design Service, he was involved with clients such as Ford, Helena Rubenstein, and Kaiser-Frazer.

In April 1953, the Flemings relocated to England for two years, where Fleming studied letterforms and the design of type and books, being mentored by such eminent English designers and design historians as Stanley Morison, Oliver Simon, Herbert Spencer, and Beatrice Warde.

When the Flemings returned to Toronto in May 1955, Allan set up as a freelance designer with illustrator Lewis Parker and taught part-time at the Ontario College of Art.

He also set up an independent graphic design studio in his home in November 1955, hiring his then student, Ken Rodmell, as his assistant a year later.

It was in this period that Fleming designed his first book.

In September 1957 Fleming joined Cooper & Beatty Typesetters as typographic director and designer.

The range and flair of the work he effected for C&B garnered attention internationally, and brought in a host of awards from the New York Art Directors Club, the Type Directors Club of New York, and the AIGA among others.

As well as paying work for companies such as General Motors, London Life, the Hudson's Bay Company, and others, Fleming produced witty and effective advertising ephemera for C&B itself.

He also designed the "Type-o-file," an innovative pick-and-mix box of type specimens arranged by family.

Fleming also co-organized (with Franklyn Smith) a number of significant exhibitions of internationally acclaimed designers such as Karl Gerstner, Hermann Zapf and Saul Bass at C&B's headquarters in Toronto.

In 1958 he attended the highly influential Silvermine Conference ("The Art and Science of Typography: An International Seminar of Typographic Design") in Norwalk, Connecticut, delivering that year the Rous Lecture on Typography at the Ontario College of Art, on the subject of legibility.

The Flemings' first daughter, Martha, was born in October 1958.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, he was vice president and director of creative services at the typographic firm Cooper and Beatty Ltd. when he designed the new CN logo in 1959.

In 1959 the New York industrial design firm James Valkus commissioned Fleming to create a new logo for Canadian National Railways as a key part of Valkus' company-wide corporate redesign programme.

The resulting logo, launched in 1960, is still in use today and acclaimed as one of the top 50 corporate logos of all time by design historian Alice Rawsthorn [Report on Business, October 2000].

In this same year he designed an innovative and gritty fundraising brochure in an unusual photo-documentary style for the United Church of Canada, as well as "Printing and Social Change" by Marshall McLuhan, which was published in Printing Progress: A Mid-Century Report by the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen.

Fleming also established his first private press that year, the Tortoise Press, whose first book was Eight Poems, by Richard Outram.

Besides launching the CN symbol in 1960, Fleming redesigned the Bank of Nova Scotia logo, and worked on projects for Dow Chemical Company, Salada Foods, Jordan Wines, Vickers and Benson, Eaton's, and of course Cooper & Beatty.

He began designing more books, such as the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Paul-Emile Borduas and the National Gallery of Canada's Canadian Painters in Watercolour and Folk Painters of the Canadian West.

Peter Fleming, Nancy and Allan's only son, was born in August.

From late June to early September 1960 Fleming travelled to the UK and Europe on a Canada Council for the Arts grant, meeting among others Jan Tschichold, Karl Gerstner, and Gunter Gerhard Lange of the Berthold type-foundry.

He exhibited work at Monotype House Gallery in London at the invitation of Beatrice Warde, gave an address on North American graphic design, and persuaded Ken Rodmell, then living in London, to return to Toronto to work for him at Cooper & Beatty and join Jim Donoahue who by then also worked in the creative department at C&B.

He became head of typography at the college, a post he held until 1961.

In 1961, Fleming became vice-president and typographic director in charge of creative services at C&B.

In 1962, he became art director for Maclean's magazine.

1962 was another busy year for Fleming.

He designed a logo for the Montreal Trust Company; letterhead for Hawker Siddeley Canada; graphics and the logo for Toronto's Malton Airport (architect John B. Parkin); all signage, monumental lettering, and the foundation stone for Massey College at the University of Toronto (architect Ron Thom); annual reports and invitations; and much more.

From 1963 to 1968, he was director of creative services at MacLaren Advertising.

From 1968 to 1976, he was the chief designer at the University of Toronto Press.

He was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Alliance Graphique Internationale, a Fellow of the Ontario College of Art, and the first Fellow of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada.

Allan Robb Fleming was the son of Isabella Osborne Fleming, a nurse, and Allan Stevenson Fleming, a clerk with Canadian National Railways.

They were both Scottish immigrants to Toronto.