Typographer of the Week: Neville Brody

One aspect of Neville Brody that I admire is his willingness to continue to explore and challenge boundaries in graphic design, despite facing negative feedback from his tutors and even after nearly getting expelled from college. It is this adventurous spirit, this perseverance that allows for new discoveries to be made and for new methods to be developed. It is something that I guess us as designers have to learn: to have the courage to pursue concepts that might not be popular or deemed as too unconventional – not commercial enough. I feel like this is especially important to do so in school, where we might be too focused on our grades and always try to skew our work to match what we know the professors like. It is during this period of time where we have the most creative freedom, where we have the most room to explore, and we should take the opportunity to really fully explore instead of sticking with what is safe or what we already know would appeal to people. 

As for what I can learn from his design style, it would be his dynamic typographic layouts. I really like how simple but dynamic his works are. For example, the poster below utilises just texts and two colours but with a slight tilt to some of the letters as well as the body copy, combined with the contrasting scale of the words, he is able to produce such a poster with so much character and energy. Neville Brody

Image result for neville brody record cover design

Much can also be learnt from his layering of simple shapes, text and texture over photographs to create something interesting. With a few elements, he is able to imbue so much character into a piece of work and that is something that I hope to be able to emulate in the future. 

Published by

Louisa Lek

*nervous laughter*

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