Les Mason Collection: Gail Mason Devine Archive

Full description

Collection relating to the career of Les Mason (1937-2016) in Australia, held in 13 boxes. It includes biographical materials, correspondence, fliers, letterheads, packaging posters, magazines, slides, transparencies and film.

Graphic designer and art director Les Mason (1924-2009) was born in California in 1924, and studied painting and interior design at Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles. When he set up his first practice West Coast Designers (1958) abstraction and pop art were at their peak. In the role of art director, conceptualiser, artist, photographer and typographer Mason was, when he left for Australia, the epitome of the new graphic design professional. He arrived in Melbourne in 1961, accompanied by his wife Pat (graphic designer and typographer) to work as an art director with the advertising agency USP (United Services Publicity) Benson. There he made his mark with an award-winning campaign for Shell Australia. The following year the Masons opened their own agency Les Mason Graphic Design (1962-1981), where he worked until 1979, relocating to Perth, Western Australia in 1981.

Les Mason Design produced award winning advertising campaigns, packaging, corporate identities, printed collateral, architectural graphics for a wide range of clients such as: Tarax, Peters, Bowater-Scott, Comalco Aluminium, Wynvale Wines, Philip Morris, State Bank of Victoria, Australian Paper and Pulp, Preservene Soap Powder, Sigma Laboratories, the Salvation Army, Melbourne Zoo and the Victorian Arts Centre. 

In 1966, Mason was approached by Allan Holdsworth of Lawrence Publishing to design a magazine for the Food and Wine Society of Australia ─ Epicurean (1966-1979), the first magazine in Australia dedicated to the love of food and wine. Mason was given absolute creative freedom which he embraced treating the magazine as a progressive artwork combined with playful yet rigorous typography and layouts by Pat Grainger. Pat left the partnership in 1972, marrying art director, Brian Grainger and moving to England. Without the aid of computers Mason and his small, highly talented team did everything by hand, producing the bi-monthly publication for another seven years until the death of Alan Holdsworth in 1979. On the death of the magazine’s founder, so too did Mason’s involvement with the magazine ending a uniquely creative period portraying food and wine as art. Phaidon (England) included his Epicurean work in 2024, amongst what they considered the 500 greatest print designers since 1477 in the publication ‘Graphic Classics’. 

In 1970, freelance writer Gail Devine was commissioned by Les Mason to develop conceptual ideas for Hayes Advertising. Mason was Design Consultant to the agency. Their collaboration went on to win many Australian and international print and television awards for Hayes’ varied mix of institutional and not for profit clients.  Fred Schepsi, now internationally recognised as a Film Director produced several of their television commercials for the Salvation Army, The State Bank of Victoria, Canberra Television and Preservene Soap Powder.

In 1981, he and writer Gail Devine moved to Perth, Western Australia, where together they ran a consultancy working for the WA Government, and clients such as Woodside, Transperth, Festival of Perth. In 1987 they married, and both began working in art and printmaking. They each had their own studio and shared a press at their rural property on the Helena River, Guildford producing many works. Mason never cared to exhibit and the Estate of Les Mason holds numerous works on paper and canvas never seen by the public. 

Les Mason was made a member of the elite Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) and the New York Type Directors Club in 1975. Mason was inducted into the Australian Graphic Design Association’s (AGDA) Hall of Fame in 1996, and the Design institute of Australia’s Hall of Fame in 2024. Les Mason died in 2009 attending the AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) Conference in Istanbul.