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Neville Brody

 
Modern Design Dictionary: Neville Brody
 
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(1957- )

From the 1980s British designer Neville Brody established an international reputation for experimental design in a wide range of visual communication media, capitalizing on the creative potential of Apple Macintosh computers. This was given ‘official’ approbation by the exhibition of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in 1988, and a one-man show in Tokyo two years later. His prolific output included a range of commissions involving digital typography, magazine design (including art direction of the innovative style magazine The Face), postage stamp design, and television graphics. After studying graphic design at the London College of Printing from 1976 to 1979, Brody was involved in design for the British music industry, including a range of sleeve designs for independent record companies such as Rocking Russian, Stiff Records, and Fetish Records. He attracted greater public attention through his work on The Face from 1981 to 1986, drawing freely for his visually exciting layouts and typography on avant-garde artistic ideas of the 1920s and 1930s such as those of De Stijl and Russian Constructivism. Far removed from contemporary editorial conventions Brody's work had a studied informality in the thoughtfulness devoted to the construction of its layouts, with blocks of texts often placed horizontally or vertically on the page, their often distinctive layouts contrasting strikingly with hand-mediated imagery and photography. Such ideas exerted a significant international impact on the appearance of magazine, advertising, and retailing design. From 1983 to 1987 he also designed covers for the style-conscious London listings magazine City Limits before going on to design for Arena, the men's magazine, from 1987 to 1990. For the latter he employed a much more restrained, minimal aesthetic. He founded The Studio in London in 1987 and soon attracted a range of international clients including conservation activists Greenpeace, Japanese stores retailers such as Parco, the Dutch postal service PTT, and the Austrian state broadcasting company ORF. Reflecting his growing interest in the design of his own typefaces, in 1990 he established FontWorks in London, also becoming a director of FontShop International in Berlin and launching the experimental typographic magazine FUSE. He has placed considerable emphasis on the role of the computer as a graphic design tool, the development of digital typography, and electronic design as an important means of communication

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Neville Brody (born 23 April 1957 in London) is an English graphic designer, typographer and art director.

Neville Brody is an alumnus of the London College of Communication and Hornsey College of Art, and is known for his work on The Face magazine (1981–1986) and Arena magazine (1987–1990), as well as for designing record covers for artists such as Cabaret Voltaire and Depeche Mode. He created the company Research Studios in 1994 and is a founding member of Fontworks.

Contents

Early life and education

Neville Brody was born in Southgate, London on 23 April 1957. At school, he studied A-Level Art, very much from a fine art viewpoint. In 1975 Brody went on to be a Fine Art foundation course at Hornsey College of Art, once renowned for its late sixties agitation, now safely amalgamated into Middlesex University.

In autumn 1976, Brody started a three-year B.A. course in graphics at the London College of Printing. His tutors often condemned his work as "Uncommercial",[citation needed] often putting a heavy emphasis on safe and tested economic strategies, as opposed to experimentation.

By 1977 punk rock was beginning to have a major effect upon London life and, while this had a great impact upon Brody's work and motivation, was not well received by his tutors. At one point he was almost thrown out of the college[citation needed] for putting the Queen's head sideways on a postage stamp design. He did, however, get the chance to design posters for student concerts at the college, most notably for Pere Ubu, supported by The Human League.[citation needed]

In spite of the postage stamp episode, Brody was not only motivated by the energies of punk. His first-year thesis had been based around a comparison between Dadaism and pop art.[citation needed]

1980-1993

Initially working in record cover design, Brody made his name largely through his revolutionary work as Art Director for The Face magazine when it was first published in 1980. Other international magazine and newspaper directions have included City Limits, Lei, Per Lui, Actuel and Arena, together with the radical new look for two leading British newspapers the The Guardian and The Observer (both newspaper and magazine).[citation needed] Brody has consistently pushed the boundaries of visual communication in all media through his experimental and challenging work, and continues to extend the visual languages we use through his exploratory creative expression. In 1988 Thames & Hudson published the first of two volumes about his work, which became the world's best selling graphic design book.[citation needed] Combined sales now exceed 120,000.[citation needed] An accompanying exhibition of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum attracted over 40,000 visitors[citation needed] before touring Europe and Japan.

1994 to present

Neville Brody continues to work as a graphic designer and together with business partner Fwa Richards launched his own design practice, Research Studios, in London in 1994. Since then studios have been opened in San Francisco, Paris, Berlin and New York. The company is best known for its ability to create new visual languages for a variety of applications ranging from publishing to film. It also creates innovative packaging and website design for clients such as Kenzo, corporate identity for clients such as Homechoice, and on-screen graphics for clients such as Paramount Studios, makers of the Mission Impossible films.

Recent projects include the redesign of the The Times in November 2006 with the creation of a new font Times Modern. The typeface shares many visual similarities with Mercury designed by Jonathan Hoefler. It is the first new font at the newspaper since it introduced Times New Roman in 1932.

The company also completed a visual identity project for the famous Paris contemporary art exhibition Nuit Blanche in 2006.

Brody’s team launched a new look for the champagne brand Dom Pérignon in February 2007, having been appointed in 2004 to help the brand with its strategy and repositioning.[citation needed] A sister company, Research Publishing, produces and publishes experimental multi-media works by young artists. The primary focus is on FUSE, the conference and quarterly forum for experimental typography and communications. The publication is approaching its 20th issue over a publishing period of over ten years. Three FUSE conferences have so far been held, in London, San Francisco and Berlin. The conferences bring together speakers from design, architecture, sound, film and interactive design and web.[citation needed]

Typography

He was one of the founding members of FontWorks [1] in London and designed a number of notable typefaces for them. He was also partly responsible for instigating the FUSE project an influential fusion between a magazine, graphics design and typeface design. Each pack includes a publication with articles relating to typography and surrounding subjects, four brand new fonts that are unique and revolutionary in some shape or form and four posters designed by the type designer usually using little more than their included font.

Notable fonts include the updated font for the Times newspaper, Times Modern, New Deal as used in publicity material and titles for the film Public Enemies and Industria.


Work

Music

Fetish Records

Art Director (1980)

Cabaret Voltaire

  • Numerous T-shirt, badge and poster designs.
  • "3 Crepsule Tracks" Album Cover (1981)
  • "Red Mecca" Album Cover (1981)
  • "Crackdown/Just Fascination" 12" Album Cover (1983)
  • "Just Fascination" 7" Album Cover (1983)
  • "James Brown" 12" Album Cover (1984)
  • "Microphonies" Album Cover (1984)
  • "The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord" Album Cover (1985)
  • "Code" Album Cover (1987)

Other

  • 23 Skidoo, "The Culling Is Coming" Album Cover (1983)
  • Defunkt, "The Razor's Edge" Album Cover (1982)
  • Depeche Mode, "Just Can't Get Enough" Album Cover (1982)
  • Level 42, "Standing in the Light" Album Cover (1983)
  • Level 42, "Microkid" Album Cover (1983)
  • Elephant Talk,Album Cover (1983)
  • Kurtis Blow, "Party Time" 12" single Cover, Club Records (1985)
  • Zuice, "Everyone A Winner" Album Cover (1986)
  • Zuice, "I'm Burning" Album Cover (1987)
  • Zuice, "Bless Your Lucky Stars " Album Cover (1987)
  • Zuice, "shought owt to all the run it straight crew an all mah dirty-30 ninjas out der tongan crip souljah 4 life" Album Cover (1987)

Magazine work

  • 1981 – 1986 Art director for The Face magazine
  • 1987 – 1990 Art director for Arena Magazine.

Misc

  • 1990 – Opened FontWorks and became the director of FontShop International
  • 1994 Founds Research Studios
  • Pioneered work using Apple computers in type design
  • A number of influential record cover designs and magazine designs
  • Designer of Israeli leading news portal and time travel
  • Postage stamps by Neville Brody

Accomplishments

  • Design for Tribeca Issey Miyake in New York with Frank Gehry[citation needed]
  • Major contributor to FUSE, an influential publication on experimental typography
  • Had a book written about his designs – The Graphic Language of Neville Brody by Jon Wozencroft, the world’s best-selling graphic design book.[citation needed]
  • London’s Victoria & Albert Museum hosted an exhibition of Brody’s work, a huge honor[citation needed]

Fonts by Brody

Brody designed some groundbreaking fonts, including:[citation needed]

  • FF Arse Faces 1
  • FF Autotrace
  • FF Blur
  • FF Dirty Faces 1
  • FF Dirty Faces 2
  • FF Dirty Faces 3
  • FF Dome
  • FF Gothic
  • FF Harlem
  • FF Meta Subnormal
  • FF Pop
  • FF Tokyo
  • FF Typeface 4
  • FF Typeface 6 & 7
  • FF World
  • Linotype Arcadia
  • Linotype Industria
  • Linotype Insignia

Sources


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Modern Design Dictionary. A Dictionary of Modern Design. Copyright © 2004, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Neville Brody".  Read more

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