Official Bio

Founder, Pentagram Design

Colin Forbes was born in London and studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. After a period as a freelance designer and lecturer at the Central School he became an art director with an advertising agency. He was subsequently appointed Head of the Graphic Design Department at the Central School.

In 1960 Colin established his own practice, having been appointed design consultant to Pirelli in England, and soon afterwards joined with designers Alan Fletcher and Bob Gill to form the partnership of Fletcher/Forbes/Gill. In the early 1970s the development and expansion of the partnership resulted in the formation of Pentagram. In 1978 Colin moved to New York to establish another Pentagram office.

Colin Forbes has been the partner responsible for corporate identity programs and other design projects for clients including Lucas Industries, British Petroleum and Kodak in the United Kingdom; American-Standard, Neiman Marcus and Melville Corporation in the United States; and Nissan, Hankyu and Kubota in Japan. He has written many magazine articles and lectured in the United States, Europe and Japan on the organization of Pentagram, corporate identity and corporate communications.

Colin’s work and contributions to the advancement of the design profession have been recognized with numerous awards and honorary appointments. From 1972 to 1975 he was a member of the British Design Council, in 1973 he was elected Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts, and from 1976 to 1979 he served as International President of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. In 1977 he was granted the President’s Award of the Designers and Art Directors Association in London for his outstanding contribution to design. He served as national President of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1984 to 1986 and is on the Committee of Advisors to the Art Center College of Design (Europe). In 1992 he was awarded the AIGA Medal in recognition of his distinguished achievements and contributions to the field, and in 1993 was named Honorary Member of the Board of Directors of the American Center for Design.

In 1988 Colin was Chairman of the Stanford Design Forum sponsored by Stanford University and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1989 he taught a master class at Yale University’s School of Art as Senior Critic in Graphic Design, and he has edited a Design & Business column in Graphis magazine.

Colin resigned full-time partnership in Pentagram as of October 1993 but continues to work with the Pentagram partners and his own clients on a consulting basis.

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