Neville Brody Overview

"In order to educate man to a new longing," Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko once wrote, "everyday objects must be shown to him with totally unexpected perspectives and in unexpected situations." Fifty years later, in the late '70s, Neville Brody adopted this as... [more]

"In order to educate man to a new longing," Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko once wrote, "everyday objects must be shown to him with totally unexpected perspectives and in unexpected situations." Fifty years later, in the late '70s, Neville Brody adopted this as his mantra and launched a full-scale assault on the staid world of graphic design. As a fresh-faced graduate of the London College of Printing, Brody brashly asserted that he hated type. Designing album covers for the independent labels Stiff and Fetish Records, he downplayed text, favoring complex, ordered imagery. He composed assemblages in which "every single mark on the page was either an emotive response or a logical extension of the ideas." When he did use type, his distaste didn't get in the way: he presented text surrounded by swirling images that reinforced the clean lines of his typefaces. Eventually, Brody conceded that both imagery and type were worthy of his experimentation. By 1981, when Brody accepted the position of art director at "The Face," a brash music magazine that owed its smart-ass sassiness to London ghosts of punk, he had already started his typeface revolution. He distorted letters, mixed fonts, and made prodigious use of icons. With noisy graphics and made-up, Postmodern typefaces, Brody shaped the magazine into a visually pioneering publication. With the creation of "Typeface Six" (1986), Brody left behind his deconstructive fonts and unrecognizable letters. After forming his own design firm in the late '80s, he turned to Macintosh computers for stimulation and inspiration. No longer encumbered by the special requirements of a music magazine, Brody took advantage of the Mac's endless resources and developed his own ideas for a publication: an interactive journal devoted to experimental type. Launched in 1991, "Fuse" immediately established itself as a cutting-edge guide to all things typographic. From his days as a type-hating art grad to his emergence as a crucial force in the evolution of graphic design, Brody has continued to fashion his own creations and reinterpret the visual significance of language in an age of ever-changing communication. [show less]