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Published: 11 March 2010
By DAN CARRIER

WHILE a giant stadium, cycling track and swimming pool rise from the ground in Stratford, the creation of an Olympic Village and the surrounding infrastructure is not the only work going on as the 2012 Games approach.

The team behind the Olympics have long chanted a mantra that this will be the greatest show on Earth, and will be inclusive, an exhibition of what makes our city great – about so much more than who can run fastest or jump highest. And as the clock ticks down, the Olympic authority is beginning to find ways of showing that it is not all about track and field (nor a gaudy opening ­ceremony with an X-Factor, Z-list line-up).

This month the Royal Mail issued the first set of Olympic stamps – and one of them has been designed by Primrose Hill artist David Holmes.

David’s background is in advertising – after graduating from Ealing College of Art, he got a job as a junior at an agency where he worked on household brands of the 1950s including Penguin biscuits and the airline that was the precursor to British Airways, BEA. 

This was long before the age of focus groups and customer profiling. Instead, David was essentially given carte blanche to work with writers and come up with catchy images and ­slogans to sell products. 

“You just had to have ideas,” he says. “It was simply up to you to generate them.

“I would draw a selection of ideas down. There was very ­little market research done.” 

David’s father was a designer, but focused on industry.

“He made crucial parts for Spitfires and the release mechanism for RAF gliders that were used in [the 1944 military] Operation Market Garden,” says David.

His neat studio space is full of pictures, images, paintings and works on the great British art movements. David has earned a living as a graphic designer but from the works on his walls, he has obviously been influenced by the great landscape painters of the 1800s.

“I suppose I could have been a full-time painter, but I would not have been so comfortably off,” he jokes. “I have spent millions of pounds of other people’s ­money, which was rather a lot of fun.”

David eventually set up his own agency with two partners and they were behind the infamous Wonder Bra advert with a bosomy model and the legend “Hello Boys”. 

Now he has been asked to help get us into an Olympic mood by taking on one of the designs for a series of stamps that will celebrate all the events on show in 2012.

But from designing images that are spread on giant billboards, David had to find a catchy look for a canvas that is not much larger than an inch across.

“It is basically my job to solve problems visually,” he says. “You have to get an idea across as easily and as simply as possible.”