His father ran a sawmill in Klevshult, Småland. His mother’s name was Magnhild Bratt and his maternal grandfather was a book printer. Seven decades after Hubert Johansson’s birth in 1918, when he received his Platinum Egg, Olle Eksell remembered in the Golden Egg Book how the two graphic design hopefuls had met in 1939 at Hugo Steiner-Prag’s newly opened school of book and advertising art in Stockholm...Read more. After graduating, Hubert became a graphic production manager at Victor Pettersons, the leading quality printer of the day. In 1943 he took over another printer, Tryckeri AB Björkmans Eftr. Here he built on New Objectivity typography with a limited but well-chosen set of clean typefaces, skilful typesetters and a reliable range of presses. Olle Eksell tried to place as many jobs as possible with him (including, later on, his classic book “Design=Ekonomi”), but more people were turning to Björkmans. With his design, Hubert attracted a slice of the cultural establishment that was as experimentalist as it was illustrious, including art galleries, poets with Weltschmerz, Ulf Linde, Jan Myrdal, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Hasse & Tage and HM Gustaf VI Adolf (in 1959, Hubert became an official Purveyor to the Royal Court of printing services). And he served another king, namely Pontus Hultén of Moderna Museum (the crowning glory was the catalogue for Art in Motion, a major international show in 1961). In closing, here’s a parting shot from Hubert Johansson, as insightful as it is hopelessly outdated: “As long as you regard electronics as an instrument, there is no great reason to mistrust it. But if creativity is ascribed to it, it’s time to assert the capacity of mind and hand to shape and reshape. Computers have a notorious ability to remain indifferent to the humour in Picasso’s play “Desire Caught by the Tail”, the serene clarity of Pär Lagerkvist or the radical innovation that may be found in a work of art being presented to an audience for the first time. A person supplying these phenomena with their graphic framing, on the other hand, cannot afford such indifference.”

– L.F.