Richard Haughton James  
Industrial and Graphic Design

After arriving in Sydney, Richard Haughton James established and ran the Design Centre from 1939 to 1940 with Dahl and Geoffrey Collings, whom he had earlier met in London. In 1939 he worked with publisher Sydney Ure Smith to establish the Design Industries Association of Australia (DIAA), of which Ure Smith was the President and James the Secretary.

The second world war interrupted this activity, and during the war, James designed Commonwealth Government war recruitment posters and worked with the Military Education Council. Throughout his career in Australia, James was passionately committed to raising people's understanding of modern art, design and photography, and is credited with helping to develop a more enlightened attitude to modern art and industrial design through articles, talks, radio broadcasts and publications and his association with organisations like the Australian Society of Designers for Industry, the National Gallery Society of Victoria, the Contemporary Art Society of NSW, the Victorian Artists Society, the Royal Society of Arts, London and the Australian Commercial and Industrial Artists Association (ACIAA). In 1947 he was elected the President of the Society of Designers for Industry (SDI), a precursor to the DIA, and remained in the role until 1955.

In 1949 Melbourne designers Max Forbes and Richard Haughton James designed the Red Cross Modern Homes Exhibition. The exhibition's highlight was a model home designed by Robin Boyd called 'The House of Tomorrow', with furniture made for the house by Grant Featherston.

James and John Briggs set up the advertising agency Briggs and James in Melbourne in 1952. By the time he retired from advertising in the mid-sixties, James was Joint Managing Director of Briggs, Canny, James and Paramor, then Australia's sixth-largest advertising agency.  

James retired from the advertising business in 1964 to devote himself to painting which he had started in 1962. He held exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney between 1965 and 1966 and moved to live in Positano, Italy, in 1966, revisiting Australia several times. Retrospective exhibitions of his painting were held at the McClelland Galleries, Langwarrin and Gryphon Gallery, Melbourne State College in Victoria between 1979 and 1980.