Everywhere You Go: Yorkshire, Barnett Freedman

Barnett Freedman CBE, RDI (19 May 1901 – 4 January 1958) was a British painter, commercial designer, book illustrator, typographer, and lithographer.

A peer of Eric Ravilious and Edward Burra, Barnett Freedman was one of Britain's most sought-after commercial designers in the mid-twentieth century. People were at the heart of Freedman's work. In mid-twentieth-century Britain, Freedman's art could be seen on book jackets to posters on the London Underground and beer advertisements in pubs.

The oil boom of the early 1920s, particularly at Shell’s Signal Hill, California site, provided the company with an opportunity to penetrate the Los Angeles area with sales of Shell gasoline and petroleum products manufactured in its new refineries nearby. In 1922, Shell Company of California and Roxana Petroleum merged with Union Oil Company of Delaware to form a holding company called Shell Union Oil Corporation. Approximately 65 percent of the holding company’s shares was held by Royal Dutch/Shell Group.