Ashley Eldrid Havinden was born at Rochester in Kent on 13 April 1903. He studied drawing and design in evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, whilst also taking lessons from the sculptor Henry Moore. He joined the advertising agency W S Crawford, Ltd as a 19 year-old trainee in 1922. He was promoted to art director and to the board in 1939. The company was immensely successful in the 1920s and 30s, with much of its success being attributed to his flair and originality. He worked with account executive Margaret Sangster (later his wife), and copywriter G H Saxon-Mills to produce many innovative advertising campaigns. Havinden was influenced by Cubism, Futurism and Bauhaus typography, and ‘by the mid-1920s he was developing a new typographic language for his advertisements’, particularly in the 1925 campaign for Chrysler, the streamlined images for which, were so successful, it inspired many imitations. Crawford’s had an impressive list of clients including the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York, Western Electric Sound Systems (for cinemas), Eno’s Fruit Salts, Dewar’s White Label Whisky and Kayser Silk Stockings, all of whom stayed with the agency for ten or more years. Crawford’s took an up-to-date approach to advertising that involved the abandonment of symmetrical layouts, horizontal type and monotonous colour inherited from the 19th century. Havinden was much influenced by Stanley Morison (who revolutionised typography with his design of sans serif faces for monotype) and the posters produced for London Transport by the American Edward McKnight Kauffer. He adopted asymmetrical layouts, introduced his own particular style of lettering and worked with a copywriter called Bingy Mills, whose use of words was often short, punchy and witty. Towards the end of the 1920s came further influences from Jan Tschichold’s revolutionary redesign of type and layout, and from the work by Herbert Bayer and others coming out of the Bauhaus, may of whose members fled Nazi Germany from 1934 onwards – and they included Gropius, Breuer and Moholy-Nagy, all of whom settled briefly in London, before leaving for America a few years later – Havinden’s contact with the pioneers of the Modern International Movement became firsthand and he employed Moholy-Nagy when Crawford’s became involved in Simpson’s new store in Piccadilly, London.  With the outbreak of war in 1939, the War Office combed out the artists and graphic designers enlisting in the army and set them to work in the critically important field of camouflage. After training at the Camouflage Development and Training Centre at Farnham Castle, Surrey, in 1941, Havinden was drafted into the Petroleum Warfare Department, and in the build-up to the Normandy Landings in June was involved with operation PLUTO (Pipeline Under The Ocean) which, as its name suggests, involved running oil pipelines beneath the English Channel in order to supply the Allied advance out of the Normandy beachhead. Stationed at Dungeness and on the Isle of White, where the fuel was stockpiled, Havinden not only camouflaged the huge concrete storage tanks, but also undertook the concealment of the pipelines and all evidence of construction work. He also designed typographical posters for the ARP and GPO, which ‘broke new ground in the use of words and colour as vivid poster material without any help from pictures’. Havinden created two varieties of monotype typeface: the Ashley Crawford in 1930 and Ashley Script, a heavy brush script, in 1955. In 1946 Havinden was much involved with the organisation of ‘The Britain Can Make It’ exhibition, held at the V&A in London. It was organised and held under the auspices of the Council of Industrial Design (COID) which had been established by government ‘to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry’. His post-war work included producing advertising materials for Daks, Wolsey and Pretty Polly. In 1946 Havinden was appointed director of Crawfords. In 1947 he was appointed Royal Designer for Industry (and was the faculty’s master in 1967 and 1969). In 1948 he became chairman of Sir William Crawford and Partners, Industrial Designers. In 1951 he was appointed OBE for his services to graphic design and was elected president of the Society of Industrial Artists (now the Chartered Society of Designers) in 1953. Havinden died in 1973.