My father, Leslie McCombie, who has died of Covid aged 94, was a graphic designer and early ecologist who campaigned for the Ecology party, a precursor for the Green party.
Born in Honor Oak, south London, to Walter, a printer, and Kathleen (nee Middlebrook), Leslie spent the second world war in Orpington, Kent, and experienced first-hand the bombing, acting as a volunteer fire watcher. One of Leslie’s first drawings featured a neighbour’s bomb-damaged house.
At the age of 14 in 1941 he went to Beckenham School of Art, where he was taught by Robin Day, Carel Weight, George Chapman and Hellmuth Weissenborn, a refugee from Nazi Germany.
After leaving Beckenham, he worked for a number of companies, including Davey and Chapman, where he produced the artwork for the Central Line extension posters, and Adprint, under the graphic designer Henri Kay Henrion, where he helped produce displays for the Festival of Britain in 1951.
In 1953 he started his own design consultancy, McCombie/Skinner, which he ran in Bayswater and later in Brixton, until his retirement in 1993. The company designed books, corporate identities and advertising. In the early years of his business he also taught typography at the London College of Printing and remained in touch with many former students and colleagues until his death. He gave many students their first jobs in his studio.
In 1952 he married Dilys Evans, and they set up home in Forest Hill. They had five children, Simon, Claire, Katie, Richard and me. Dilys died in 1968 and he married Chris Taylor in 1972. They had two children, Jessica and Laura; that marriage ended in divorce in 1989.
A youthful member of the Communist party, Leslie was later interested in the green movement. He carried out design work for the New Economic Foundation, the Pesticides Trust (now Pan UK), and the Ecology party, a forerunner of today’s Green party. In the 1970s he participated in an early house-to-house paper recycling scheme. When his friend David Smart stood as the Ecology party candidate in Dulwich in 1979, Leslie was David’s election agent.
Leslie was a serial attender of evening classes, and participated in community activities throughout his life. He was involved in the Lewisham Local History Society and was the membership secretary for some years. Just before lockdown he helped to create an edible garden for the Kingswood community shop in south-east London. He is survived by six children and five grandchildren. His daughter Katie died in childhood.
