MARGARET CALVERT

Margaret Calvert OBE RDI (born 1936) is a British typographer and graphic designer who, with colleague Jock Kinneir, designed many of the road signs used throughout the United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies, and British Overseas Territories. She also designed typefaces including the Transport font used on road signs, the Rail Alphabet font used on the British railway system and Calvert font used on Tyne and Wear Metro system. The typeface developed by Kinneir and Calvert was further developed into New Transport and used for the single domain GOV.UK website in the United Kingdom. Alongside these projects, Calvert taught at the Royal College of Art for almost 40 years and was head of graphics from 1987 to 1991.  Calvert was awarded with an honorary degree by the University of the Arts London in 2004, she was made a Royal Designer for Industry for Graphic Design in 2011, in 2015, she was presented with the D&AD President's Award and in June 2018 she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by Arts University Bournemouth Calvert was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to typography and road safety. A retrospective exhibition of her work, Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, was held from October 2020 until January 2021 at the Design Museum in London.  ‘Design is a service,’ she once said. ‘It’s purely logic, function and aesthetics.’ And yet, as her career confirms, at its best it becomes fine art.