David King

David King (30 April 1943 – 11 May 2016) was a British graphic designer, design historian, and writer, who assembled one of the largest collections of Soviet graphics and photographs. From this collection, he created a series of books covering the history of the Russian Revolution and its associated art and propaganda. In addition to Soviet-era photographs, posters, and other materials, his collection included items related to the Spanish Civil War, Maoist China, the Weimar Republic, and American labour organizations. He is the creator of the Anti-Nazi League's red-and-yellow logo. King described his work as an attempt "to create a visual style for the left." from which he graduated in 1963.

While at The Sunday Times, King also worked as a freelance graphic designer in the record business, designing covers for The Who Sell Out, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and Axis: Bold as Love. His design for the 1968 Jimi Hendrix album Electric Ladyland generated controversy as it featured a David Montgomery photograph of 19 nude women, which King intended as a contrast to the image of women found in Playboy magazine. The photo was considered too risqué for the US edition of the album and was replaced by a picture of Hendrix. King, a self-taught photographer, additionally documented the training sessions of Muhammad Ali before his 1974 match with George Foreman. In 1975, the photographs were published in I Am King: A Photographic Biography of Muhammad Ali. He also designed book covers for radical and progressive publishers, including Allison and Busby and Earthscan Publications, as well as for mainstream publishers, such as Penguin Books. In 2020, Yale University Press published Rick Poynor's book David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian. Poynor and Eye magazine art director Simon Esteron also set up a website in support of the book; the site contains designs by King from his private archives.

Works Trotsky: A Documentary, Penguin Books, 1972, I Am King: a photographic biography of Muhammad Ali. Penguin, 1975, How the GPU Murdered Trotsky, 1977, by the International Committee of the Fourth International, illustrations by David King David Elliott & David King: Alexander Rodchenko. Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1979, David Elliott & David King: Mayakovsky: Twenty Years of Work. 1982, David King & Cathy Porter: Blood & Laughter: Caricatures from the 1905 Revolution. 1983, David Elliott & David King: Art into Production: Soviet Textiles, Fashion and Ceramics, 1917–35., 1984, Isaac Deutscher & David King: The Great Purges. 1984, Trotsky: a photographic biography. 1986, , by David King, Tamara Deutscher (introduction), James Ryan (commentary) The Commissar Vanishes, Metropolitan Books/Canongate Books, 1997, ISBN 978-0-86241-724-6. Ordinary Citizens: The Victims of Stalin. 2003, Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union. 2009, Russian Revolutionary Posters: From Civil War to Socialist Realism, from Bolshevism to the End of Stalinism. 2012, David King & Ernst Volland: John Heartfield: Laughter is a Devastating Weapon. 2015,