Ignite Design: Ronald Searle

Pictured in his studio in 1954 at a time when, following two failures, Searle produced drawings for Punch, cartoons for Tribune, the Sunday Express and the News Chronicle, along with more St Trinian books

Ronald Searle is a British cartoonist, born in 1920 in Cambridge, England. By the time he was fifteen years old he was drawing professionally and attending art school. After a few years of drawing cartoons for magazines and newspapers he was sent to Singapore as an architectural draughtsman in the Territorial Army. Just a month after arriving there he was captured and spent the next three and a half years labouring in a prison camp. While there he continued to draw and record the things that happened in the hope that they would be found so people would know what had happened there. It also helped sustain him, and others around him.
His style is very recognisable, mostly outline drawings done in black ink. They are very flamboyant but flowing, and still capture the raw, hand-drawn effect. His cartoons are very satirical so obviously all his characters are caricatures, with grotesque and disproportionate features to express their personalities and role, without the need of many words.

Searle's spindly characters of St Trinian's were distinctive with stockinged legs, ferocious expressions and their dastardly acts of torture