page_title: Allan Fleming
section_title: Getting Established
hierarchical_section_title: Allan Fleming / Chronology / Getting Established
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Allan Fleming photographié pour Canadian Art, pour accompagné un article de Robert Fulford (volume 16, numéro 4, novembre 1959)
context_page_description: Allan Robb Fleming was a Canadian graphic designer best known for having created the Canadian National Railway logo, designing the best-selling 1967 Centennial book Canada: A Year of the Land/Canada, du temps qui passe, and for revolutionizing the look of scholarly publishing in Canada, particularly at University of Toronto Press.
  Born in Toronto, Ontario, he was vice president and director of creative services at the typographic firm Cooper and Beatty Ltd. when he designed the new CN logo in 1959. In 1962, he became art director for Maclean's magazine. From 1963 to 1968, he was director of creative services at MacLaren Advertising. From 1968 to 1976, he was the chief designer at the University of Toronto Press.
  He was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Alliance Graphique Internationale, a Fellow of the Ontario College of Art, and the first Fellow of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada.
context_section_description: When the Flemings returned to Toronto in May 1955, Allan set up as a freelance designer with illustrator Lewis Parker and taught part-time at the Ontario College of Art. He became head of typography at the college, a post he held until 1961. He also set up an independent graphic design studio in his home in November 1955, hiring his then student, Ken Rodmell, as his assistant a year later. It was in this period that Fleming designed his first book.
  In September 1957 Fleming joined Cooper & Beatty Typesetters as typographic director and designer. The range and flair of the work he effected for C&B garnered attention internationally, and brought in a host of awards from the New York Art Directors Club, the Type Directors Club of New York, and the AIGA among others. As well as paying work for companies such as General Motors, London Life, the Hudson's Bay Company, and others, Fleming produced witty and effective advertising ephemera for C&B itself. He also designed the "Type-o-file," an innovative pick-and-mix box of type specimens arranged by family.
  Fleming also co-organized (with Franklyn Smith) a number of significant exhibitions of internationally acclaimed designers such as Karl Gerstner, Hermann Zapf and Saul Bass at C&B's headquarters in Toronto. In 1958 he attended the highly influential Silvermine Conference ("The Art and Science of Typography: An International Seminar of Typographic Design") in Norwalk, Connecticut, delivering that year the Rous Lecture on Typography at the Ontario College of Art, on the subject of legibility. The Flemings' first daughter, Martha, was born in October 1958.
caption: Fleming in 1959
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