Swapping the grey, mean streets of London for the wide open spaces of the Cotswolds back in the 1970s was a shot in the dark if you wanted your graphic design career to thrive. OK, Broadway, Stow in the Wold and Bourton on the Water are more inspirational and beautiful than Hackney or Brixton, no question, but the reality was design technologies then were still in the dark age with the industry still locked in a craft-based production cycle and business communications that hadn’t changed for an eternity. Landlines, the good old Royal Mail and unreliable couriers such as Dithery Dave were the only available options for your business to keep in touch with the outside world. Consequently, almost all of the major design studios were city or town-based owing to the need for almost continual third-party support and the logistics of client liaison.

The list of suppliers needed to facilitate the business was endless. You needed a reliable photosetter, (prepared to deliver three or four times daily if required), access to a decent photographic studio or two (at that time still mainly located in urban areas), printers, regular supplies of art materials (a studio without cow gum or artboard was like a car without petrol), a repro house and Uncle Tom Cobley and all to keep a studio running. To add to the problem clients almost always chose a studio as much for its location as its creative abilities so business opportunities were few and far between (unless the Nell Gwynne Tearooms needed a new logo or menu designing). Consequently attracting new clients was a major problem once it was known that you were located in the back of beyond.

However, there were a few hardy pioneering design souls (or idiots) prepared to sacrifice career progression and the city-based easy life for the creative inspiration of living and working in one of the most beautiful places in the country. A few determined and committed trailblazers prepared to trade in opportunity, financial reward and recognition for the thrill of driving their knackered Renault 4’s through enormous snowdrifts (the weather and the cars were a lot worse back then — fact!) for a meeting or to get the visuals, artboards or the print there on time. And I was one of them.

But the truth is this had all been tried long before, albeit with a chequered outcome, by a true design and craft pathfinder. In 1888 the architect and designer Charles Robert Ashbee had established a successful craft workshop called the Guild of Handicraft in East London but, in 1902, he moved the workshops to Chipping Campden, a small medieval wool town in the heart of the Cotswolds, presumably for pretty much the same reasons as I was to make the move some 80 years later. Although the Guild itself went into liquidation in 1908, Ashbee’s innovative gesture transformed the history of craft and design in the Cotswolds, for it brought the Arts and Crafts movement to the area.