Stafford Cliff
Graphic Design

Stafford Cliff is Australia’s most successful and prolific designer, art director and interior, food and lifestyle publications author. He designed the iconic Habitat catalogues for Terence Conran’s UK retail chain for ten years from 1971 and was Creative Director of the multidisciplinary Conran Design Group in the 1980s. In 1974 he designed The House Book, the biggest-selling home book ever. This was followed by the Style series and over 60 other books and magazines. 

Stafford was born in Gawler near Adelaide in 1946 and studied Advertising Art at the SA School of Art from 1962 to 1965 whilst working as a Commercial Artist. He then relocated to London and worked at Conran Design Group (CDG) with Sir Terence Conran in 1966. In 1971 he moved to the fledgling furniture company Habitat, also run by Conran. There he became Art Director for the Habitat Catalogue and significantly influenced the design language of the retail chain, which grew to 47 stores globally by 1980. 

Stafford returned to CDG as Graphic Design Director in 1979 and became Group Creative Director in 1986, at which time it was one of the largest multidisciplinary design groups in the world. He oversaw the three divisions of Products, Interiors and Graphics. He designed a new CDG logo, incorporating a yellow triangle, red circle and blue square to represent each division and design discipline. 

While working at CDG, Stafford began collaborating with author/publisher Suzy Slesin and photographer Gilles De Chabaneix and others on the Style Series of books, including English, French, Caribbean, Japanese, and Greek styles. The books became a publishing phenomenon and helped launch the trend for beautiful and stylish ‘coffee table’ books. 

He left CDG in 1990 to work full-time on book design and art direction. Cliff’s notable publication design projects include Metropolitan Home Magazine UK, the Everyday Things book series, The Way We Live (plus six spin-offs), 1000 Garden Ideas and 1000 Home Ideas. 

Stafford’s favourite quote, which exemplifies his life and career, is ‘My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to excel, and to do so with some passion, some compassion and humour, and some style’.