The graphic designer I have chosen to discuss is Neville Brody. I have chosen him and feel like he has made a significant contribution to contemporary design because i like the fact that he mainly focuses on type how he can make a piece of text or type look more like an image. I think his work is visually exciting and the the style of his work is received well.
Neville Brody is one of the most famous graphic designers of all time. He has done everything in graphics such as logos, typography, posters, editorials, magazine, advertising and more. The one thing that makes him stand out is the fact that he isn’t afraid to approach design in an unusual way. You can see this in him from an early age. During the 1970s Brody was taking his degree in graphic design. This was the punk era, and London where he grew up was hugely affected. There were rebellious children and adults, rise of unemployment, strikes, and many people living off the dole it was a bad time. During his time at college, as one of his pieces of work he decided that he wanted to put the Queen’s head sideways on a postage stamp, which was frowned upon and seen as disrespectful. This nearly saw him being expelled off the course. What I most recognise him for is his typographic style. He hasn't followed the rules when it comes to type, he has pushed the boundaries. He has made type more visually exciting.
During the 1950s typefaces were to be clean and legible and anything different to this got a lot of criticism. Then it completely changed in the 60s, this was a vibrant decade there was pop art, optical art, repetitive patterns came in, birth control, sexual freedom and advertising became really popular. When it came to typefaces being produced serifs were popular and it just seemed like the rules of type had changed extremely. It was more like typefaces were made to be eye catching and funky and to make people look and think. Whereas in the 50s type was tedious and everyone got it straightaway.
With Brody's type he wants his work to follow some of the rules but not all . He wants to create type so it is visually exciting but not too obvious to the target audience and not too complex either.
In some aspects of his work he can be compared to David Carson. The layout in his type is similar to Brody's but not as extreme. The difference in Carson's work there seems to be a lack of structure whereas Brody's work seems thought out.
Brody is also well known for his work on The face magazine which was first published in 1981. The target audience for this magazine was aimed at wealthy teenagers who were into fashion, art and music. He made the design of the magazine abnormal. Using distorted letters, mixing up the fonts and making the typefaces postmodern. Towards the end of the 1980s the magazine started to lose it target audience resulting in the magazine having its last issue.
During the 1990s fontworks opened and this is when Brody really became the master of the mac and took type to a new level. He created a new visual language. The first typeface he created on the mac was Blur, he then went on to doing many more such as insigina, Arcadia, Typeface six which are the three most popular. He once said 'I liken working on the mac to jazz properly you have to become highly skilled at an instrument, working with a mac you have to learn the technology just as you would learn to play an instruments'.
The ideas behind his work come from artists such as Russian constructivist's El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko. He also gets inspiration from Man Ray's and Lazlo Maholy- Nagy's work. What all these artists have in common is there use of colour and shape and how they use there type. I could also link the shapes Maholy- Nagy uses and the shapes Wassily Kandinsky uses, which are both quite geometrical. Maholy- Nagy's work looks more like compositions because of way he has portrayed each object.
Brody's work relates to the postmodern theory radical electicism in that he takes aesthetic elements from other artists work such as Maholy-Nagy and alters them in his own way. This is shown in 'The Face' magazine.-
Brody's work also encompasses the idea of double coding. Based on the fact that most Brody's work is computer based he is taking styles that he has created on the computer a communicating them in postmodern way. Also the architectural layout in the arena magazine references double coding.
Brody's work also encompasses the idea of double coding. Based on the fact that most Brody's work is computer based he is taking styles that he has created on the computer a communicating them in postmodern way. Also the architectural layout in the arena magazine references double coding.
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