Neville Brody

Neville Brody is an English graphic designer, typographer and art director. He was born in April of 1957 in London, and was also brought up in London. He attended the London College of Printing and the Hornsey College of Art. He is one of the most influential figures in graphic design of the era end and is most known for his work in The Face magazine and Arena magazine. He is the head of the Communication Art and Design department at the Royal College of Art. In addition to this he has worked and designed record covers for independent record companies such as Fetish, Hannibal, and Phonogram Records in the 1980’s. He created the company Research Studios in 1994. He has also created many fonts in his lifetime, such as Arcadia, Insignia and Industrial. He was one of the founding members of Fontshop in London and designed many typefaces for them.

Typography created by Neville Brody

This is a design that Neville Brody created and is one of his most famous works. This is a great example of typography and I really like the use of colour on this piece. Brody is an innovative thinker and expressed this using both design and type. The image is basically a man’s face that has been created with only text. The details of the face have been recreated using type. The type is made up of multiple fonts and is mostly serif typefaces and traditional typefaces. The separate fonts and typefaces are all made up of different sizes and weights, which I think is good considering the image would not look as good if it was the same size.  The image also ranges from colour from dark blue at the bottom to light blue to red on the right to orange on the left. I also like the light shining at the top left of the image and I think this a good addition to the image, so it wouldn’t simply be just type. There are also words like “Unravel”, or “Tumbling Dice”, or “Ashes to Ashes”.

Brody's Nike advert

This is a poster advertisement for Nike that was created by Brody and is a perfect example of how talented he was at grabbing attention from a viewer. The first element that I notice is the two separate halves of the page. The half on the left is of a man’s face with a neutral expression, and the other half is just plain white. The reason this image is so well-known is because the typography on the image looks very disorganised, yet is very organised and was made to look like that. Brody intentionally made the text look like this and made it all over the place to attract attention. There are words in this that are very commanding yet inspiring, such as “bounce”, or “slam”. Words like this are used because Nike’s tagline is “Just do it.” I also like the fact that the word “just” is inside the letter “b” of “bounce”, and the way the word “it” is inside the letter “m”, and that the colours differentiate between the two halves of the image and also when some words are in letters. Another thing I find fascinating is the way each word and even some letters are in a different angle and location than the word before it, which creates a link between Brody and the viewer. There are also three Nike trainers placed to look like they are sitting on the word underneath, which is very effective.