Art Director of Face Magazine
Neville Brody rose to prominence during the early 1980s surge of “designerism”: when the British economy was expanding, marketing, promotion, and “cultural entrepreneurship” was in the air, and young culture was a money-spinner. Neville Brody became Britain’s first international graphic design superstar in this media-conscious environment.
Education
From 1977 to 1980, Brody studied printing at the London College of Printing.
Biography
He started working for Alex McDowell’s design firm, Rocking Russian, before moving on to Stiff Records and Fetish Records. He was the art director of The Face, one of the most prominent fashion publications of the decade, from 1981 to 1985, when it was at its peak. His signature was an uncommon and experimental use of type (inspired by Lissitzky and RODCHENKO’s Constructivist work) and the design and utilisation of specifically drawn logos, symbols, and typefaces that served as visual codes for the magazine’s cult audience. The journal achieved international acclaim under Brody’s art direction. His work sparked a typographic revolution among young designers in the United Kingdom, marked by a renewed interest in the creative potential of type and a growing number of Brody imitators.
In addition to The Face, Brody worked on record album sleeves for various rock bands, logos for organisations like Red Wedge (a group of young people affiliated with the Labour Party) and Artists Against Apartheid, redesigns for City Limits and New Socialist magazines, and a variety of other projects at the time. In 1988, at 31, he was recognised with a retrospective exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, showcasing his prolific productivity. At the same time, he published The Graphic Language of Neville Brody (Thames & Hudson), a collection of his work that became one of the best-selling art books of 1988.
Recent Years
Brody continues to run his studio in London, with recent projects including art direction for Arena magazine, designs for Swatch watches (due for release in late 1990), the design of retail outlets for Post, a new agency that handles all forms of three-dimensional structure and which he co-founded.
After being hired in 2004 to aid the champagne brand Dom Pérignon with its strategy and repositioning, Brody’s team launched a new look for the company in February 2007. The core focus is the conference and quarterly forum for experimental typography and communications, FUSE. Research Publishing, a sibling firm, creates and publishes experimental multimedia works by emerging artists. Over a ten-year publishing history, the publication is approaching its 20th edition. There have been three FUSE conferences in London, San Francisco, and Berlin. The conferences feature design, architecture, sound, film, interactive design, and web design lecturers.
Neville Brody was featured in the Welsh WJEC exam board’s Graphic Design curriculum as of 2017.
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