FRONT / TRIBUTE
ABOVE ICON, July 2006
RIGHT Under Marcus, ICON rapidly established itself as one of the world’s most influential and respected design journals ruefully, ruffling feathers along the way. Reading Justin McGuirk’s brilliant full obituary on Dezeen, it didn’t surprise me to learn that Marcus’s early ambition was to become a travel writer. He satisfied that wanderlust by carving a career that took him globetrotting anyway, relentlessly – when did Marcus sleep!
His travel journal, a.k.a. Instagram, reveals a man who yes, loved a juicy star designer cameo, but who found beauty everywhere. From the obvious, those jaw-dropping scenic Lake District hills he loved to climb with his family, wildlife or some new architectural gem, to the quotidian – Jess the family cat, the queue outside a Stoke Newington craft shop, a cyclist on a Hackney towpath. If not a journalist, he could have been a photographer (award winning, of course), or perhaps if he’d had it his way, a late-life pop star. His ability to make design accessible was boosted by an onstage charisma that was laser bright,
Autumn 2022
‘Like the best designers, [Marcus] never lost his childlike curiosity about the world. He had an unquenchable thirst for life in all its confounding, complex glory’
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