The author, collage artist and designer Graham Rawle, who has died aged 69, of complications related to cancer treatment, once said: “As a kid I was always writing stories, making scrapbooks and magazines, building collections (bubble-gum cards, toy soldiers etc), making up jokes, drawing pictures. None of this seemed like work to me – it’s quite funny that this is now called ‘my career’.”
Graham gained public recognition for his collage series Lost Consonants, which first appeared in the Guardian in 1990. Readers were welcomed to a world where children have “leaning difficulties”, firemen wear “fame-resistant clothing” and footballers “get camp in their legs”. The series turned out to have greater longevity than Graham had imagined: “I initially submitted six. As I had lots more ideas and no one at the Guardian told me to stop, I just kept sending them in. There was no real agreement between us, but they always printed them, and I always got paid. I sent them in for the next 15 years.”
