“An electrician isn’t an opinion former, but a graphic designer is. My argument is that all graphic designers hold high levels of responsibility in society. We take invisible ideas and make them tangible. That’s our job.”
By: Brad Rivera
Neville Brody was born in Southgate, London on 23 April 1957. At school, he studied ALevel Art, very much from a fine art viewpoint.
His tutors often condemned his work as “Uncommercial often putting a heavy emphasis on safe and tested economic strategies, as opposed to experimentation.
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.
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.
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
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
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).
In 1988 Thames & Hudson published the first of two volumes about his work, which became the world’s best selling graphic design book. An accompanying exhibition of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum attracted over 40,000 visitors.
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.
Brody’s team launched a new look for the champagne brand Dom PÊrignon 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.
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. 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.