Richard Yeend
About
Richard Yeend was born in London on 5 April 1945, and was educated at Canterbury Cathedral Choir School, Kings College, Taunton and Cambridge School of Art.
In 1969 Yeend replaced Abu Abraham as pocket cartoonist on the Guardian, and for five years produced both caricatures and cartoons for the paper’s feature pages. Following an introduction from Roger Law, then working as an illustrator on the Sunday Times, Yeend also began working freelance for that paper, drawing weekly caricatures and political cartoons. At this time the Guardian and Sunday Times shared a building and presses in Gray’s Inn Road, London, and Yeend worked from a desk in the Sunday Times art department. He also drew covers for Time Out, and in 1973 was a guest cartoonist on the Sun while Paul Rigby was on holiday.
In 1974 Yeend moved to New York City and freelanced for the New York Times (following another introduction from Roger Law), Soho Weekly News, and Screw magazine. In 1975 he joined the Boston Herald American as art director, redesigning the daily and Sunday papers and the colour magazines, and drawing political cartoons. In 1978 he moved to the New York Times, where he designed the financial and business sections, and also drew sports caricatures. In 1987 Yeend joined the International Herald Tribune, and in 1998 moved to Die Welt, in each case redesigning the paper and drawing editorial cartoons. In 1999 he became art director of Wall Street Journal Europe, also contributing caricature and stipple headcuts.
Yeend has also drawn for Time Out, Radio Times, Newsweek, Fortune, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, Le Monde, Abendzeitung and the Berliner Morgenpost. He designed 18 typefaces for the Monotype Corporation and 10 for Linotype GmbH. He cites his influences as the calligrapher Alfred Fairbank, who wrote “A Handwriting Manual” (1932) and in 1952 founded the Society for Italic Handwriting; Berthold Wolpe, the German calligrapher and typeface designer, who from 1948 taught lettering and drawing at the Camberwell College of Art, the Royal College of Art, and the City & Guilds of London Art School; and Roger Law. In 1970 Yeend designed a neon sign for Lloyds Bank in Piccadilly Circus, London, and in 1998 the logo for the Berliner Morgenpost.
Markosia published Yeend’s graphic novels ” The King’s Irish: A Celtic Tiger Earns his Stripes” in 2018, a satire on the IRA and the Boston Mob and “Tex Twitter Meets the Cherokee” in 2023, a satirical biography of a rogue president.
References used in biography
- Information from Richard Yeend
- “Font Designer – Richard Yeend” at www.linotype.com/7-643-7/richardyeend.html