Jock Kinneir

Who was Jock Kinneir?

Richard 'Jock' Kinneir was a typographer and graphic designer who, with colleague Margaret Calvert, designed many of the road signs used throughout the United Kingdom. Their system has become a model for modern road signage.

Kinneir was born in Hampshire in 1917. He studied engraving at the Chelsea School of Art from 1935 to 1939. After World War II Kinneir was employed as an exhibition designer by the Central Office of Information. He next worked for the Design Research Unit, and then opened his own practice in 1956. He also taught part-time at the Chelsea School of Art.

Kinneir's first big commission was the design of the signage for Gatwick Airport. He chose one of his students at Chelsea, Margaret Calvert, to assist him. When Sir Colin Anderson, the chairman of the P&O Line shipping company read about the Gatwick signage, he chose Kinneir to design a baggage labelling system for P&O. In 1957 Anderson was appointed chairman of the government committee formed to design signs for the new British motorway network. T. G. Usborne, the Ministry of Transport official in charge of the Anderson Committee, then formed a new committee under Sir Walter Worboys to review signage on all other British roads. The objective was to produce signs that could be read at speed.