Neville Brody Typography 2 #1

THE TYPE

ISSUE 1 JULY/AUGUST 2017

Magazine

design

r b

y d

neville

in the

1980’s ISSUE 1

“

We are so obsessed with the Net and technology that we forget the message... We imagine to be able to do anything, and our software helps us believe we can... But we must move beyond the ‘how’ to reconsider the ‘what’ and the ‘why’...”

7 songs by 23 Skiddoo, 1982 Tyson Vs Tubbs Fight Poster, 1988

Tyson Vs Tubbs Fight Poster, 1988

2

The Type Magazine

Neville Brody

An

internationally known British graphic designer and typographer,

Neville Brody, is best known as his role as Art Director and his work on ‘The Face’

magazine, which was first published in 1980, but he is also an international brand strategist and a leading typographer, being the founding partner for FontShop.com and designing many typefaces such as Blur, Autotrace and the set of Dirty typefaces, among others.

Brody had made a name for himself particularly in the ‘80s with his brand strategy for Nike, designed in 1988, the Cabaret Voltaire Record Cover in 1984 and various ‘The Face’ and ‘Arena’ covers throughout this time. ‘The Face’ magazine had therefore the way in which designers and readers approached typography and layout” according to Jon Wozencoft, 1988.

“transformed

However, leading back to the years prior to his famous roles, Brody attended the Fine Art Foundation Program in 1975, at Hornsey College of Art - a highly conservative school - where Brody then decided to pursue a career in graphics rather than fine art and began a 3-year Bachelors Degree in Graphics at the London College of Printing in 1976 and saying “I wanted to communicate to as many people as possible, but also to make a popular form of art that was more personal and less manipulative. I had to find out more about how the process worked. The only way possible was to go to college and learn it,” as he genuinely hated his time at the college and his work was considered too experimental, with tutuors often condeming ‘The Face’ Magazine 1984

“I wanted to communicate to as many people as possible, but also to make a popular form of art that was more personal and less manipulative. I had to find out more about how the process worked. The only way possible was to go to college and learn it” his work as ‘uncommercial’– he even put the Queen’s head sideways on the design of a postage stamp and was almost thrown out of the school. However, Brody continued to push on with his degree and after graduating, began designing record covers for British punk music companies including Fetish and Hannibal, which played perfect for Brody as the scene then was more interested in the ideas behind the music rather then the music itself and Brody could experiment outrageously, much to his pleasing and to the likes of these companies.

Once Brody began his most notable work for ‘The Face’ magazine, he continued questioning the orderly composition of layout design. “Why be inhibited by the edges of the page?”, Brody said. - He wanted the magazine to be as visually appealing as possible, wanting people to look at a page twice. Other magazine works of his included the 1980’s London magazines’ ‘City Limits’ and ‘New Socialist’ as well as ‘Arena’.

During the period of the 1980’s, Neville Brody let his experimentation take over all of his works, he allowed himself the privilege of designing the way

He was not just another graphic artist following all of the rules and this led to his biography being published in 1988, by Thames & Hudson with a par t-one of a twohe wanted to.

volume set of his work. The book, ‘The Graphic Novel of Neville Brody’, became the best selling graphic design book in the world and it was then, that Brody became famous and noticed for his intentional differences in graphic design.

ISSUE 1

3

4