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 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). The studio 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, Fletcher Jones fashion, Australia Post, State Bank of Victoria, Australian Paper and Pulp, Sigma Laboratories, the Salvation Army, Melbourne Zoo and the Victorian Arts Centre. In 1966, Mason was approached by Allan Holdsworth of Lawrence Publishing with offer to become the art director for a new magazine for the Food and Wine Society of Australia, the Epicurean (1966-1979). Mason was given absolute creative freedom which he embraced treating the magazine as a progressive art work combined with playful yet rigorous typography and layouts by Pat Grainger. Pat left the partnership in 1972. Holdsworth died in 1979 Mason’s involvement ceased. In late 1960s and 1970s important commissions included the Preservene (soap) identity campaign (1973-74) made with young film director Fred Schepisi, and the ‘Thanks God for the Salvos’ campaign (1969-mid 1970s). He was made a member of the elite Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) and the New York Type Directors Club in 1975. In 1982 he and copyrighter Gail Devine married and moved to Perth, Western Australia, where they ran a consultancy. Les was inducted into the Australian Graphic Design Association’s (AGDA) Hall of Fame in 1996. He died in October 2009. The collection comprises two accession lots, the first comprising twelve boxes and the second, one box. The collection is arranged by media and by client. The Epicurean Magazine is held in boxes 1 and 2; Materials relating to various clients, and biographical materials are held in boxes 3 and 4; Publications are held box 5; Transparencies, slides and films in Boxes 7 and 8; Fliers are held in box 10 and Packaging in Box 11. A further accession lot contains an issue of Graphis, and material relating to The Epicurean magazine. A detailed inventory is available.