Neville Brody

Neville Brody was born in Southgate,London on April 23, 1957. At school, Brody studied A-Level Art, very much from a fine art viewpoint. In 1975 Brody went to on to be a Fine Art foundation course at Hornsey College of Art, once renowned for its late sixties agitation, now safely amalgamated into Middlesex University.
In autumn 1976, Brody started a three-year B.A. course in graphics at the London College of Printing. His tutors often condemned his work as "Uncommercial", often putting a heavy emphasis on safe and tested economic strategies, as opposed to experimentation.

By 1977 punk rock was beginning to have a major effect upon London life and, while this had a great impact upon Brody's work and motivation, was not well received by his tutors. At one point he was almost thrown out of the college for putting the Queen's head sideways on a postage stamp design. He did, however, get the chance to design posters for student converts at the lecp, most notably for Pere Ubu, supported by The Human League.
In spite of the postage stamp episode, Brody was not only motivated by the energies of punk. His first-year thesis had been based around a comparison between Dadaism and Pop Art.

Neville Brody is an alumnus of the London College of Communication and is known for his work on The Face magazine (1981–1986) and Arena magazine (1987–1990), as well as for designing record covers for artists such as Cabaret Voltaire and Nine Inch Nails.
He was one of the founding members of FontFont (now FontShop) in London and designed a number of notable typefaces for them. He was also partly responsible for instigating the FUSE project an influential fusion between a magazine, graphics design and typeface design. Each pack includes a publication with articles relating to typography and surrounding subjects, four brand new fonts that are unique and revolutionary in some shape or form and four posters designed by the type designer usually using little more than their included font.

He now continues to work as a graphic designer with his own design practise called Research Studios which in addition to London has studios in Paris and Berlin. The studios work on a wide range of projects including packaging for Kenzo Perfumes, to creating branding for companies such as Macromedia and HomeChoice.

My View:

I have Read Jon Wozencroft's first book on Brody "The Graphic Language of Neville Brody: v1" which documents Brody's early career, his outlook and influences and career up until the late 80's. Brody was something of a rebel, and was a big success in the 1980's with all his record sleeve designs and The Face, which was huge and original at that time. I hadn't read too much of what he did later, but i do know he did a lot of experimental typography, which is quite interesting as Brody is quoted as saying he hated typography in his book, and only gained his interest later by doing his own, drawing his own customised stuff for the Face.

In the 90's Brody became a director of Font Shop International with whom he launched the experimental type magazine, FUSE. Brody has exhibited at the V&A, and has recently undertaken a redesign for UK's Times and updated the famous Times typeface, times modern. more details can be read here.