Cal Swann attended art school in his hometown at Leicester College of Art in 1951. Specialising in typography under Tom Westley for the last three years, he gained the National Diploma in Design (Typography) and Full Tech C&G in Typographic Design in 1956. 

RAF National Service followed, and then quick career moves in print design, a couple of advertising agencies and eventually lecturing. Job chasing took him to London and elsewhere around UK. He produced his first book Techniques of Typography in 1969 while lecturing at Manchester College of Art and Design. An interest in linguistics was enhanced with an MA in Applied Linguistics, Lancaster in 1986, resulting in his second book Language and Typography in 1991, also with Lund Humphries.
 
Cal was Head of Graphic Design at Saint Martin’s School of Art in Covent Garden from 1981-86 and his last position in UK was as Dean and Professor of the Faculty of Art and Design at Liverpool Polytechnic. 

He moved to Australia in 1989 as Head of Design at the University of South Australia where he was awarded a Professorship in Typographic Design. Cal was in 1996 appointed Professor of Design at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia where he launched the first totally online Master of Design in 1998. Retiring from fulltime professoring in 2001, he was still active in design and teaching and developed and taught three typographic design units online for Virtu Design Institute until 2019.

He is continuing writing and designing (and playing a little amateur jazz on vibraphone) and enjoying a relaxed retirement with his wife Sandra, about 50K south of Perth and next to the Bush, in Western Australia.

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