In 1968, when Freddie Mercury was studying Graphics and Illustration at Ealing Art College, First Year Graphics Students produced this one-off magazine of artwork, poems, articles and anecdotes.

“this magazine is the work of Ealing First Year Graphics Students, but in a way it is anti-Graphic Design. Our only aims in producing it are to entertain and delight you, and perhaps even to inform and impress you.”

~Jill Marston, editor

‘Ealing’s Feelings’, snippets of memories and photos of old Ealing, printed on a 19th century ordnance survey map of the local area.

In the early 1960s the School of Art was composed of Fashion, Graphics, Industrial Design, Photography and Fine Art Departments. With courses considered revolutionary during the mid 1960s, Ealing Art College (or Ealing Technical College & School of Art) existed on the site of UWL’s Ealing Campus on St Mary’s Road until the 1970s. The two-year Ground course was a radical and influential experiment in art education led by Roy Ascott, whose work was based on cybernetics and telematics.

Ascott taught alongside a team of artists including R.B. Kitaj and Anthony Benjamin. Pete Townsend’s inspiration for the destruction of guitars and amplifiers is said to have come from Gustav Metzger’s auto-destructive art lectures. Subsequent students of the College included Ronnie Wood, Alan Lee and Freddie Mercury.

Front cover of the magazine

Donated by former student Tim Dean who attended the School of Art between 1967 and 1969, the magazine is now in the hands of UWL Archive. If you’d like to look at the work in more detail, why not make an appointment to visit?