Neville Brody is a British Graphic designer, Typographer as well as Art director who was at the forefront of the Graphic design genre for over two decades. He is one of the most influential graphic designers of the late 20th century and his work in the 1980's revolutionised the look of magazines, advertisements, album covers and packaging. He is most well-known for his album cover designs for the record company, 'Rough Trade', as well as numerous poster designs.
It was his strong interest in art movements such as Dada, Pop art, Futurism and Constructivism which influenced much of his work. These movements deconstructed old ideas about painting and art and design in which the Dada movement in particular was revolutionary particularly during the late 70's. Punk rock was beginning to have a major effect upon London life and Neville Brody decided this was the inspiration he needed. He continued to put all his effort into devising different styles of typography and tear up all the rules in the same way as his predecessors did in the Dada art movement. Although he is from the era of Punk and Dadaism, and is hugely influenced by these ideas, I believe he is not behind in today's technological ways.
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| Punk Rock ever-present in the 1970's |
Brody's opinion was that people read magazines in a different manner from the way they read books. When reading a magazine he believed people tend to browse; they don't read it straight through from the beginning to the end. Readers tend to go back and forth picking out the interesting bits. Brody decided to use this idea as a basis and lay his principles for all of his design work. To highlight the most interesting parts of an article and to attract the attention of the reader, he used contrasting sizes, shapes or colours of type. In his designs for the "The Face" magazine, he arranged the type in diagonals or in circles, some letters were extra-large, some undersized.
Brody decided that the typography should be an integral part of the whole design and be given equal importance. He felt that the style of lettering should be used to illustrate the article as well as the image or photo and have the same impact. This was very unusual. Instead of page numbers he used symbols and to separate the different topics or articles he designed little logos.
To give 'The Face' magazine a corporate identity, he designed a new style of typeface exclusively for their own use. It was tall, slim and elongated style with no serifs but modern, curved ends. As the years progressed Brody developed his typeface to include interesting details such as symbols, signs and more unusual punctuation marks, all of this attention to detail helped make 'The Face' the most fashionable and influential style magazine of the late 20th Century. He has designed several popular typefaces including Arcadia, Industria, Insignia, Blur, Pop, Gothic, and Harlem.
Album cover design by Neville Brody are good examples of the post-punk style and show the highly individual approach taken by this designer. Many contained handcrafted elements such as paintings or drawings, collage or rubbings. In the days before computer design everything has to be cut and pasted together from paper cut-outs, film overlays or transfer prints.
Brody often created 3D models, plaster casts or wooden carvings then photographed them for his designs. Brody also identified his role of a designer as one who is an advocate of society and his client. He sought after the idea that a designer should be aware that he or she is persuading someone to think in a certain way, and not design something that you think your client would buy. This school of thought has made him produce work that is more than pleasing to the eye, it was work that could connect with its audience, work that an audience can interpret beyond the surface.
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| Series of Face magazine covers |
I believe that the influences he has drawn upon has made ever-more interesting through such forms as Dadaism and Pop art which has made a great and positive impact in Neville Brody’s work and life making him, exactly who he is today and also making his work the way it looks, keeping it to a high standard, which has helped him become a world reknowned graphic designer in typography. I’m sure that Neville is overly thankful for his opportunity that he has had having these designs influence him at this time, because things could possibly have been different if punk and pop art wasn’t as popular in the time that he was studying. What if they weren’t Would there be such an amazing typography graphic designer if pop art and punk didn’t become known at that time period?
"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..."
