My friend and colleague Lynn Wilson, who has died aged 53 of cancer, was an award-winning graphic designer in television news and current affairs. Turning breaking news into clear, accurate illustrations against the clock requires a special kind of grace under pressure, but Lynn made it all look easy. Everything she did was illuminated by great heart and good humour. Considered by many colleagues to be the best designer in BBC news, where she worked for the past decade or more, Lynn brought to the job a triple whammy of flair, unflappable professionalism and an utter lack of airs and graces. She was a self-effacing team player.
Lynn’s work enhanced almost every major news outlet on British terrestrial television, including flagship programmes such as Channel 4 News and Newsnight. She created the opening titles for the BBC’s Scottish referendum coverage, as well as the Victoria Derbyshire programme, and she was responsible for the look of many other international BBC strands, including Impact and Have Your Say.
Lynn was born in Willenhall, in the West Midlands, the daughter of Janet (nee Stanley) and Arthur Wilson, who both worked in the lock industry that was the mainstay of the town. She was a promising gymnast before studying art and design at the West Midlands College of Further Education. It was not long before she was making a career for herself in the highly competitive world of the national media.
Lynn had an unerring eye for what works on television, a surprisingly rare gift in the industry. Word of her talent went before her and she was offered a job in Rome, designing for a fledgling TV channel based in the Gulf. In vain she suggested to producers that they might like to depart once in a while from their unvarying palette of blingtastic gold.
Lynn had a prodigious curiosity about life and an appetite for learning, always among the first to adopt new technology in her work. She added the skills of a videotape editor to her impressive CV, cutting news reports for bulletins. She excelled in this new discipline but missed design, her first love. She returned to graphics work as a freelancer, combining this with a busy social round in north London with her partner Andreas Niebisch, a giant of a man who made harps, much missed since his death in 2011.
A striking platinum blonde, Lynn was as stylish in life as she was in her work. While she was undergoing treatment for cancer, her hair was cropped short in dramatic shades of ivory and mother of pearl, but she carried it off with such elan that she was stopped in the street by admirers begging to know the name of her stylist.
Her parents and brother, Adrian, survive her.
