Neville Brody: The Face Magazine
Who is Neville Brody?
Neville Brody is a British designer, typographer, creative director, graphic designer and brand specialist. Brody is known for "pushing design boundaries and deploying innovation" (Brody Associates, n.d)
'The Face' magazine, was a culture, fashion and music magazine launched in 1980 by Nick Logan. 'The Face' was published in Britain until 2004. However, it did start back up again in 2019. During 1981 - 1986 Brody was hired by 'The Face' to be their the art director and his unruly designs made 'The Face' magazine unique and eye catching. His designs were divergent to the 80s as no one else was creating designs like him. It was unusual to produce such unsystematic designs, however this is what made him stand out and help make 'The Face' magazine "the most fashionable and influential style magazine of the late 20th century" (NEVILLE BRODY GRAPHIC DESIGNER, 2013).
Brody was heavily influenced by art movements such as Dadaism, Futurism, Art Deco and Constructivism. These movements all played a strong hand in helping him create his post modern style designs. These movements all had lawless and unmethodical characteristics and this radicalness is what inspired him.
Typography
Before working at 'The Face' magazine, in 1977, Brody studied at The London College of Printing (The LCP). He was opposed by the environment as The LCP reiterated the importance of commercial methods and applications however, Brody's work was deemed as experimental and they had branded it as "uncommercial" (Clarke, 2020).
The best typography often contained uniformity and followed systematic rules, however this was something that did not appeal to Brody and this lead to him disregarding these lessons and not attending them. As a result of being absent during the typography lessons this meant Brody did not know the traditional rules of typography causing him to be limited in his knowledge.
However, this lack of knowledge did not hold him back nor hinder him, as he started to study typography from art he saw around him and took great inspiration form work created by Alexander Rodchenko.
Brody saw typography as " a medium for commenting ideas and so should be expressive and entertaining" (Clarke, 2020). In 1984 he ended up designing a new style of typeface called 'Industria' exclusively for 'The Face' magazine. The font was tall, elongated, sans-serif style that was modern featuring geometric precision and gave 'The Face' a "corporate identity" (NEVILLE BRODY GRAPHIC DESIGNER, 2013). As time went on Brody refined his typeface to incorporate symbols and punctuation marks, this further gave 'The Face' magazine a more unique and original look.
In designs for 'The Face' he would arrange type in different sizes, diagonals or circles, use contrasting sizes, shapes and colours - even use a variety of different lettering on the same page; This would help to highlight the key parts and draw in the reader and make the page more eye catching. He stated that he felt that "The Face was a living laboratory where I could experiment and have it published" (Clarke, 2020) and this really helps you to understand his designs, as it shows just how much freedom he had and his designs were not limited by rules.
'The Werk Ethic'
When I first looked at this spread, 'The Werk Ethic', an interview on Ralph Hutter I kept in mind his designs had specific meanings and no aspect of it was for style purposes. I thought that 'The Werk Ethic' was meant to symbolise a decreased work ethic due to the word 'work' being spelt incorrectly in the headline as 'werk'. This to me symbolised that the writer had low work ethic as he 'couldn't be bothered' to spell check his work. Also the way the word 'ethic' is going in a downward direction also suggest low and decreasing to me."
However, after reading the article I can now realise the word 'ethic' is positioned that way to symobolise an overflow of work. Also the bright colours of his work symbolised the joy for the work with red being a symbole of passion and love and yellow being a symbol of energy, joy and happiness it made sense to me that these colours were used in the spread.
The clever way that Brody has placed 'interview Steve Taylor' in a circle and positioned it under the strategically placed word 'ethic' makes it look like an explanation mark. This could symbolise as the overflow of their new work they are excited and want it emphasised! - Brody's work is remarkably clever in the way one design is used to create more than one meaning but still contributing to the whole message.
Brody also positions words and photographs in a way they are bleeding off the page, this does not only make the magazine look unique but also suggests a narrative that there is more to see than what is only on the page.
Through Brody's work widely spaced letters became a key element of his designs for 'The Face' this was done to slow down the viewer, giving them time and space to consider the content they were reading.
Overall
Overall, Brody is a noteworthy artist who carefully considers his designs. It is no surprise his designs influences many other artists and magazines around the world.
His content has made me consider the layout of my work a lot more, as I plan to present my work in an editorial magazine, I am now not just thinking about the position of photos but also the text and other elements.
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References
Brody Associates. (N.D). Neville Brody. Brody Associates. https://brody-associates.com
Clarke, A. (2020). Inspired Design Decisions With Neville Brody: Design Cannot Remain Neutral. Smashing Magazine. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/inspired-design-decisions-neville-brody/
(2013). NEVILLE BRODY GRAPHIC DESIGNER. Scottish Schools Info. https://tinyurl.com/4k29dc42
Bibliography
Figure 1 - Brody Associates. (n.d). Untitled [png]. Brody Associates. https://brody-associates.com
Figure 2 -
Figure 3 - Taylor, S. (1982, March). The Werk Ethic. The Face, (23), 48.