Neville Brody was Born in Southgate,London on April the 23rd in 1957 and is a Graphic designer, typographer and art director, in his early life he studied A-level art at Minchenden Grammar school, and is a former student of Hornsey College of Art where he did a Fine Art foundation course, and Then in 1976 he attended London college of printing where he started a three-year B.A course in graphics, where his tutors usually branded his work as 'uncommercial', he is known for designing record covers for artists such as Caberet Voltaire and Depeche Mode, as well as working on 'the face' magazine and 'Arena' magazine Brody made his name largely popular through his revolutionary work as Art Director for The Facemagazine when it was first published in 1980, Other international magazine and newspaper directions have included City Limits, Lei, Per Lui, Actuel, aswell as creating a new look for two leading British newspapers The Guardian and The Observer He is head of the communication Art and Design department at the Royal College of Art
Punk rock was said to have had a great influence upon Brody's work around 1977, at one point he was almost thrown out of college for putting the queens head sideways on a design for a postage stamp, However this was not Brody's only motivation as his First Year thesis had been based around a comparison between dadaism and pop art.
Since the creation of his company 'Research studios' in 1994 it has expanded internationally, having offices in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and New York, the studio focuses on branding, packaging, redesign and visual identity and had a variety of clients such as Sony, Bentley, Kenzo, Nike, Apple, The BBC and MTV europe.
Brody was also a founding Partner of a digital type library, FontShop and was the first font reseller in digital type history, while he has also designed a number of notable typefaces.
His most recent projects include the re-design of the BBC in 2011 and the Times in 2006 with the creation of a new font, times modern and is the first new font since Times new roman in 1932.
Looking at magazine layout work in the 1970's before Neville Brody, I came to find that the layout of even teenage magazines were quite basic and and plain and printed in black and white, for example this Magazine article from 1977 about a band, however in this day and age this would need attract readers due to the fact the writing is in blocks and it seems extremely long to read, taking in to account Neville Brody had to read these types of articles as it would have been some of the only information available about certain things, it most likely gave him the motivation to do something different with layout and make things more interesting, so it would be more exciting for the audience.
Personally I like Neville Brody's work as I think most of his work is very eye catching due to the use of bold colours and the different sizing of his typography, I also like the way in which he positions his typography and images as he places them horizontally, vertically and diagonally, and sometimes above or below each other, giving his work a feeling of movement and adds more atmosphere to the theme of his work.
