Ink ran through the veins of my friend Martin Lee, an outstanding print producer who collaborated with many eminent designers and fine printers on some of the world’s most beautiful books. Career highlights include the remarkable Designed by Apple in California (2016). But over and above such bookish excellence, Martin, who has died aged 83, played an important bridging role between the disciplines of design and print; in the transition from analogue to digital print technologies; and through passing skills and knowledge from one generation to the next.
He was born William Martin Lee in Horsforth, Yorkshire, to Elinor (nee Mosley) and William Lee, a noted civil engineer, and had two younger sisters, Viv and Trisha. After Douai school, Martin trained as an accountant with Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co (now KPMG). But he decided on a change of vocation, enrolling in a print management course at the London College of Printing, then joining Westerham Press, in Kent, in the early 1960s. There, still in his 20s, he was entrusted with the task of laying out the new, purpose-built press.
