Michael Johnson (graphic designer)


Michael Johnson is a British designer and brand consultant. In 1992 he founded design studio johnson banks in London, UK.

Biography

After graduating Michael worked as a designer and consultant for Wolff Olins, Sedley Place, Smith and Milton, London; Billy Blue and Emery Vincent, in Melbourne and Sydney; and Dentsu, Tokyo.
In 1992 he set up johnson banks and went on to advise and create brands for clients including Virgin Atlantic, Science Museum, Shelter, The Guggenheim Foundation, Sendai Space Observatory and Pew Center for Arts and Culture. As well as creating visual identities for a range of clients, Johnson has designed various posters and stamps including a set celebrating The Beatles for Royal Mail in 2006.
In addition Johnson writes for many design journals, judges design competitions and lectures worldwide as far afield as Toronto, Tokyo, Berlin and Goa on branding, identity issues and design history.
He has won most of the design world's most prestigious awards, has nearly twenty designs in the V&A's permanent collection and was D&AD President in 2003, one of the youngest presidents ever. The Independent Newspaper selected him as one of the 10 most notable British Designers in 2003, and in 2009 The Guardian Newspaper named him as one of the UK's top 50 designers. D&AD named his as the seventh most awarded designer in its history in its fifty-year celebrations in 2012. The second edition of his first book Problem Solved was published in autumn 2012.
The Guardian has described Johnson as ‘Bright, fluent, relentlessly articulate’, Design Week said ‘Johnson has a knack of being able to distil the complex, diffuse or workaday down into simple, intelligent, witty messages’. In the late nineties, The Sunday Times described Johnson as ‘The Government’s favourite designer’. He has been named ‘One of Europe’s finest graphic designers’

Awards and recognition

D&AD Awards

Solo