Neville Brody

Neville Brody
200px Neville Brody in Berlin in 2007
Born	(1957-04-23) 23 April 1957 Southgate, London, England
Occupation	Graphic designer, typographer, art director

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

Neville Brody is an alumnus of the London College of Printing and Hornsey College of Art, and is known for his work on The Face magazine (1981–1986) and Arena magazine (1987–1990) which also includes David Beckham in the poster, 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. He is the new Head of the Communication Art & Design department at the Royal College of Art.

Early life and education

Neville Brody was born in Southgate, London on 23 April 1957. He attended Minchenden Grammar school and studied A-Level Art, very much from a fine art viewpoint. In 1975 Brody went on to do a Fine Art foundation course at Hornsey College of Art, once renowned for its late sixties agitation, now part of 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", 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 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.

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.

1980-1993

Initially working in record cover design, Brody made his name largely popular 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 Guardian and The Observer (both newspaper and magazine). Brody has 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. Combined sales now exceed 120,000. An accompanying exhibition of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum attracted over 40,000 visitors before touring Europe and Japan. Amongst countless other projects, in 1989, upon request by the then-director Gerhard Coenen, to Neville Brody, the young Swiss graphic artist and typeface designer Cornel Windlin, then working at the then called "Neville Brody Studio" designed the Corporate Identity for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) in Berlin, Germany. Subsequently, Brody, Windlin, and staff Simon Staines, Giles Dunn and others visited Berlin more than once on projects; resulting in several collaborations with Berlin-based graphic artist and typeface-designer Kolja Gruber and artist Nina Fischer for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in the following years.

1994 to present

Neville Brody still also 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 Paris, Berlin and Barcelona. 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 BBC in September 2011, 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. 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.

Typography

He was one of the founding members of FontShop http://www.fontshop.com 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. In 1990 he also founded the FontFont typeface library together with Erik Spiekermann.

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)

• Your Mum, Album Cover (1981)
• Bush Tetras, "Das Ah Riot/Boom", Album Cover (1981)
• The Bongos, "Time and the River", Album Cover (1981)
• The Bongos, "Zebra Club", Single Cover (1981)
• The Bongos, "Mambo Sun", Single Cover (1981)
• Clock DVA, "4 Hours", Album Cover (1981)
• Clock DVA, "Thirst", Album Cover (1981)
• 23 Skidoo, "Seven Songs", Album Cover (1982)
• Throbbing Gristle, "Five Albums" Album Cover (1982)
• 8 Eyed Spy, "Diddy Wah Diddy" Album Cover (1982)
• Z'EV, "Wipe Out/Element L" Album Cover (1982)
• Stephen Mallinder, "Pow Wow" Album Cover (1982)
• Various Artists, "Last Testament" Album Cover (1982)

Cabaret Voltaire

• Numerous T-shirt, badge and poster designs.
• "3 Crepuscule Tracks" 12" Single Cover (1981)
• "Red Mecca" Album Cover (1997)
• "Crackdown/Just Fascination" 12" Single Cover (1983)
• "Just Fascination" 7" Single Cover (1983)
• "James Brown" 12" Single Cover (1984)
• "Microphonies" Album Cover (1984)
• "The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord" Album Cover (1985)
• "Code" Album Cover (2012)

Other

• 23 Skidoo, "The Culling Is Coming" Album Cover (1983)
• Defunkt, "The Razor's Edge" 12" Single Cover (1982)
• Depeche Mode, "Just Can't Get Enough" Single Cover (1982)
• Level 42, "Standing in the Light" Album Cover (1983)
• Level 42, "Micro-Kid" Single Cover (1983)
• Elephant Talk, Album Cover (1983)
• Kurtis Blow, "Party Time" 12" single Cover, Club Records (1985)
• Raybeats, "Holiday Inn Spain/Cocktails" 7" single cover on Don't Fall Off The Mountain label (1981)
• 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
• Postage stamps by Neville Brody
• 2010 - "global visual language" (GVL) to establish consistency across BBC websites - starting with Doctor Who and BBC News
• 2010 Collaborates with Masha Ma in an art-fashion crossover installation at the Get It Louder art bienalle in Beijing.

Accomplishments

• Design for Tribeca Issey Miyake in New York with Frank Gehry
• Major contributor to FUSE, an influential publication on experimental typography
• London’s Victoria & Albert Museum hosted an exhibition of Brody’s work
• D&AD President's Award 2011

Fonts by Brody

Brody has designed 24 font families, including:

• Arcadia
• FF Autotrace
• FF Blur
• FF Dirty 1
• FF Dirty 3
• FF Dirty 4
• FF Dirty 6
• FF Dirty 7
• FF Dirty 7.2
• FF Dome
• FF Gothic
• FF Harlem
• Industria
• Insignia
• FF Meta Subnormal
• FF Pop
• FF Tokyo
• FF Typeface 4
• FF Typeface 6 & 7
• FF Tyson
• FF World

References

• The Graphic Language Of Neville Brody, Jon Wozencroft (1988) ISBN 0-500-27496-7
• The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 2, Jon Wozencroft (1994) ISBN 0-500-27770-2

External links

• Neville Brody studio in London
• Neville Brody studio in Paris
• Neville Brody studio in Barcelona
• Apple Profile of Neville Brody
• Biography at Research Studios
• Biography and list of his typefaces at FontFont
• Neville Brody at TYPO Berlin 96 conference: »Where's the beef?« as video