Vale Graham ‘Smokey’ Dawson (1957 – 2014)

The industry was saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Graham Dawson last week.

John Ilian, who worked with Dawson for several years, remembers him as an unassuming but talented art director.

As the legendary Hollywood voice-over, Hal Douglas (recently deceased) might have said, “Sixty million years ago in a land that time forgot – when Copywriters cared about punctuation and syntax, and Art Directors crafted beautiful layouts by hand armed with nothing but a box of Yoken markers, there loomed the ghost of the Finished Artist.”

More important than prominent, he sat at a carefully angled drawing board with a parallel ruler, a set square and a T-square. By his side, there was a container of rubber cement (latex-based adhesive), a tin of lighter fluid (solvent to remove the adhesive), a spatula, a scalpel, some pencils and a box of Rotring pens.

Using their layout, Art Directors measured the word count of the copy and prepared a typographic mark-up specifying the fonts they wanted, their weight, their size, their kerning and their leading – and sent both the copy and the layout out to an external typesetter. The layout would be returned with the body copy set to the Art Director’s specifications as bromides, and the photos screened as halftones.

Before the computer, there was the craftsman. Sometimes, headlines were supplied as bromides. But having drawn up a piece of pasteboard with a blue pencil, the Finished Artist would occasionally use dry transfer lettering (Lettraset) to lay down the headline, character by character. Using his scalpel, he would then carefully trim all of the typeset bromides, and painstakingly paste them into position to assemble the artwork, sometimes opening the leading or the kerning by a thousandth of a unit by hand. Once approved, the Finished Artwork became a master bromide before the Production Manager sent it off for stereo blocks or films, plates and proofs.

As most who worked in agencies during that era would recognise, a good Finished Artist was no less critical to an agency than its Copywriter or Art Director.

When I first met him in the early eighties, Graham Dawson was that rarity.

A larrikin agency owned by rascals if ever there was one, Rose Boon Lorrigan employed us both. A young copywriter, I had recently been fired by O&M. Graham arrived from the Gibneys artroom, one of the typesetting houses in Perth at the time. He had no formal training besides an ill-fated drawing scholarship from an Applecross secondary school. But he had a passion for design and illustration.

RBL was swallowed up by Paton Davis Australia (John Davis, Brett Goodridge and Kim Newman).

Poor John Davis. I shan’t forget watching Graham teach Tim Pearson how to light farts lying on the art room floor. It was during a visit by an international agency whose imprimatur John was courting at the time. After several attempts, Tim succeeded just as the visitors were shown into the art room.

Graham was an extraordinary talent. If you knew him, it was immediately evident that Graham had a thinking brain, a quick wit and a unique perspective on the world. And he could draw. By God, he could draw. After Paul Young’s terrible car accident resulting in a permanent incapacity, I convinced John to promote Graham as an Art Director. A quiet and humble man, Graham took to the role with relish and created some wonderful, original work.

Then, PDA was enveloped by JMA (Jenkin Morgan Aitken).

After a couple of years, Graham and I left JMA to form the first incarnation of The Sharper Pencil – then, perhaps the first writer/art director consultancy in Perth. We worked on a wide cross section of clients. Perhaps, the most widely known was 96fm. During the mid eighties, Graham and I worked out of Mojo in Nedlands on both national and local clients before FCB Shorter made us an offer at the end of 1986. While I accepted it, Graham did not. That was where our commercial and creative partnership ended.

Graham opened a liquor store in Maylands. Several traumatic robberies later, Graham unloaded it and joined Clemenger where he was the Creative Director. (In those days, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between a liquor store and an ad agency). There, Graham worked with Adrian Gerson and Paul Stead, and later at MJB&B. He enjoyed working with Steve Rowe and Brian Bowley amongst others.

Graham was by nature, a cynic – a lovable cynic, but a cynic nonetheless. That was one of his greatest attributes. If he didn’t accept a point of view, he’d interrogate it to within an inch of its life looking for its validity. I’m grateful that I learnt that much at least from Graham. He was certainly no Ray Van Kempen, but I think his abilities as both an art director and as a conceptualiser, were very much under-rated.

He had no confidence in what he called ‘suits,’ yet he appreciated an insightful strategy. He was an unpretentious man and abhorred bullshit. He was never a showman. He hated presenting. He despaired of office politicking. He was never fond of Campaign Brief (which he renamed ‘Complain Brief’).

Gradually, he became disenchanted with the advertising industry and the insincerity involved giving corporate head to clients whose mental processes he regarded as seriously defective, if not stupidly fickle. But he could be as funny as he was confronting. A combination of intelligence, creative integrity, imagination, ability and skill, I believe he left a uniquely creative blot on the advertising landscape.

In recent years, besides a few direct clients for whom he undertook the occasional project, Graham was mostly enamoured with fine art. He built a studio at his home to accommodate his passion. Speaking with his wife a few days back, he has, by all accounts, left an amazing body of paintings.

I hope that the world gets to see and appreciate them. He deserves that much.