I can't teach you because you haven't read anything

1_colin_forbes_portrait

Born in London in 1928, Colin Forbes studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. "Art school was for misfits," he says with some satisfaction. Thrown in with the other misfits, he discovered generally what he wanted to do, and specifically how far he was from being able to do it competitively. "I could draw better than anyone else in the senior class in middle school," he recalls; but in art school the ante was raised: "suddenly I was surrounded by people who all drew better than anyone in the senior class. And better than I did."

Forbes gleefully describes Central School as "an organizational disaster," a circumstance he credits with leaving students free to learn. It also left students free not to learn, a freedom Forbes came perilously close to enjoying fully. One of his treasured teachers was a wood engraver named John Farleigh, who said to him one day, "Colin, I can't teach you anything because you haven't read anything." Farleigh gave him a list of a dozen books to read, most of which Forbes can no longer name, although he remembers that it included Huxley's Brave New World and Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and that others were by Dos Passos, Waugh and Dostoyevski. Although none of the books were about art or design, he regards the reading list as intrinsic to his learning to be a designer.