Ian Kidd's impact on graphic design from Adelaide, with wine labels/firms' brands, wins hall of fame place
Ian Kidd and aspects of his graphic design contribution. Bottom left is Barrie Tucker, Kidd's partner briefly, whose agency was also a prolific designer of wine labels.
Ian Kidd’s global and national achievements in graphic design, including 30 years of labels for Australian wine going to world markets, won him a place in the Design Institute of Australia hall of fame and named among 25 South Australian design icons in 2017.
Having studied agricultural science at school, Kidd’s hopes to be a farmer were soon redirected by a family contact who ran an advertising agency. Kidd got a job with Adelaide’s Myer store advertising department. He thrived in its grounding that showed how to best pursue design and advertising.
After 18 months, Kidd was head hunted by an old Myer colleague to work for advertising agency Clem Taylor: “I was on £7.6s a week at Myer and I shot up to £21 working at the agency.” But a recession hit and was Kidd was redundant within two years.
After briefly working for the Clem Taylor client, Arnott’s, designing in-store displays, Kidd in 1961 sailed for London and at 19 joined The Polytechnic Company designing travel brochures for a few months. He left London penniless and boarded the Queen Elizabeth, via New York, to Ottawa, Canada, to stay with a friend. His jobs there included in-house designer for a huge property development corporation designing everything from ads to corporate identity. He won the first of his three United States marketing awards.
Back in Adelaide in 1968, Kidd found a “pretty backward” design scene and returned to a mid-weight job in advertising before being head hunted, this time by George Patterson. From creative director, he become national creative director, building George Patterson to the state’s biggest.
Kidd decided to go into business for himself, recognising that graphic design, not advertising, was his passion. After a year operating solo, Kidd teamed up with designer Barrie Tucker who’d also worked abroad. The partnership lasted two years.
In the early 1970s, Ian Kidd Design Solutions’ first clients included wine labels and property developers, drawing on his Canadian experience. Kidd’s breakthrough influential work was for Toop & Toop but his designs with wine labels, such as Seppelt Wines and Peter Lehmann Wines, had a national impact. Replacing a heavy masculine image, the Kidd agency’s Peter Lehmann work was one of the first to successfully create an art series for a wine label.
Kidd also did new branding for Australia’s largest corprations and projects including the National Rail Corporation, Adelaide-Darwin rail link and QBE Insurance. Another memorable client was The Bank of South Australia. Kidd came up with a new “State Bank” marque and the map of South Australia in dots as part of a new identity extending to the carpets, signage, credit cards and stationery.
A founder of Adelaide Art Directors Club and the Australian Graphic Design Association, Kidd retired in 2007 and many designers, including Matthew Remphrey, Gerben Van Der Hoek and Sam Iannucci, branched out from the firm to start up their own companies.
