Stan Krol was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw, Russian Empire (now Poland), in 1910. After studying at Warsaw University and Dundee College of Art, after migrating to Scotland, he worked in Britain as a graphic designer, poster designer, typographer and art director, producing posters for commercial and public clients. Stan Krol died in Richmond upon Thames, Surrey, in 1985.
Designer Stan Krol was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw, Russian Empire (now Poland), in 1910, the son of Henryk Krol, who ran a varnish and paint manufacturing business. He studied at Warsaw University before relocating to Scotland, where he continued his artistic training at Dundee College of Art. Krol went on to build a career in applied design, working across poster design, typography, advertising graphics and editorial art direction, and became part of the wider field of mid-twentieth-century British graphic design. During the Second World War, Krol was represented in the exhibition, Art in the Forces, held at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, in 1943 (Artists Biographies database). In the postwar period, his poster designs circulated internationally, appearing in exhibitions in Amsterdam and Breda in 1954, Rotterdam in 1955, and Linz in 1955, and later in the 3rd Poster Biennale in Warsaw in 1970.
Krol produced designs for both commercial and public-sector clients. His known poster work includes designs for BOAC, the General Post Office, and Smiths clocks and watches (a Smiths clocks and watches poster by him was reproduced in Graphis). By the late 1950s, Krol was art director of the holiday and travel magazine Go. He was also a member of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers (SIAD), indicating his professional recognition within British applied design. His work was represented in Keep Britain Tidy. And Other Posters from the Nanny State, a publication on British public information posters from the 1940s to the 1970s, reviewed in Eye Magazine in 2014. The review placed him alongside highly-regarded designers including Jan Le Witt, George Him, Aubrey Rix, Reginald Mount, Eileen Evans, Abram Games, Royston Cooper and Hans Unger (a number of whom were emigres), and noted the varied visual strategies used in such posters, from illustration, photography and collage to cartoons, humour and vivid colour. Although surviving information on Krol’s life and career is limited, the available sources identify him as a versatile designer whose work encompassed commercial advertising, public information, travel promotion and editorial design.
Stan Krol died in Richmond upon Thames, Surrey, in 1985. In the UK public domain, his work is represented in the Postal Museum and Archive and the London Transport Museum. In 2017, his work was featured posthumously in the exhibition Designs on Britain at the Jewish Museum, London. A poster by Krol, Just a job? Just the job (1953) is held in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam collection
Irene Iacono