(1936 - )
Graphic designer, typographer and educator, Margaret Calvert was born in South Africa, moving to England as a teenager in 1950. In the late 1950s, she completed a four-year National Diploma in Design course at Chelsea College of Art, specialising in illustration and printmaking. There she met Jock Kinneir, a visiting tutor who had recently left Design Research Unit (among Britain’s most prestigious design consultancies in the 1950s and 1960s) to start his own practice. In 1957, Calvert assisted Kinneir in the design of a signage system for Gatwick Airport; a collaboration which would eventually lead to a design partnership and the establishment of their design firm Kinneir Calvert Tuhill. Calvert has had a long association with the Royal College of Art as Head of Graphic Design from 1986 to 1991, having taught part-time from 1966. In 2011, she was elected a Royal Designer for Industry, and in 2016 awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art. That same year, she received an OBE for services to Typography and Road Safety, as well the Misha Black Medal for distinguished services to design education. Most recently, she was awarded the London Design Festival’s 2017 Lifetime Achievement Medal.
