In Memoriam: Philip James Baber

Stick No Bills was founded on a dream and a vision of making the world a more beautiful place.
This was the vision of Founder Philip Jame Baber and his beloved wife Meg Gage Williams, so it is with deep sadness that we share the news of Phil’s death after a long illness which he battled with all of his inimitable style and aplomb. His dark sense of humour and acerbic wit were always by his side, along with his insatiable appetite to keep producing and creating more fantastic poster art right up to the very end.
Phil, who survived the 2005 tsunami in Sri Lanka and had already established himself as a successful advertising photographer, created Stick No Bills with his security analyst wife Meg in 2011 when they were living in Galle Fort, Sri Lanka. He designed travel posters and she set up their first gallery located in an old Dutch colonial merchant's townhouse in the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage City.
Theirs was a vision to create something beautiful and of the highest quality to celebrate the natural beauty and culture of their adopted home while giving back to the community they were living in. This is the same philosophy they brought to Palma de Mallorca and their gallery in Costa D’en Brossa right in the heart of the old walled city and today this spirit shines all over the world wherever their poster art can be found.

Together they have now spent over a decade respectfully curating, digitising, cataloguing and creating new poster art as well as remastering historic artworks; licensed prints where the artist and/or production entity who first created the image receive their dues.

Phil’s incredible eye for detail, colour and composition have been the driving force behind the creativity and output of Stick No Bills and Meg is incredibly grateful he wanted to pass his role on to their good friends Angela Hartwick and Daryl Visscher, themselves renowned film-makers and photographers. They have been working together and planning this for a long time, while hoping this day would never come.

Most importantly and above all else, Phil was a devoted husband to Meg and a fun-filled, boisterous and joyously loving father to his beautiful daughters Farrah and Alexa.

We are thinking of them and holding them close, as well as his sister Victoria, his mother Carolyn and the whole extended Williams family who loved him so, so much.

To mark his exceptional career, we wanted to share the very first poster design he created back in 2011 in Sri Lanka as well as his last, a beautiful re-mastering of a 1920’s Fomento de Turismo poster of Sa Foradada in Mallorca.

Phil loved the sea.

‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by’
Sea Fever
By John Masefield