Neville Brody:
Inventing a Graphic Language
Through “Fuse,” his interactive journal on experimental type, Brody attempts to “liberate typography from its textual role.” He extracts the words and explores the other layers of communication within typography in the same way a painter explores abstract forms without having to represent reality.
“On the simplest level,” he explains, “the choice of a typeface pretty much dictates the way you would interpret information. If you read a book that was in a very large Helvetica, you would respond very differently to the words on that page than if it was set in a small Baskerville or Garamond. There are different levels of meaning within typography that dictate the tone in which we will approach the words and the content. And it’s a very subliminal thing; we are really not conscious of this on a day-to-day basis.
“What we’re saying is there are other levels in typography that are communicated exactly the same time as the words that we read. Because typography is something that everyone can have access to,” Brody says, “typography can become an abstract form in itself.
A lot of typefaces we’ve published in ‘Fuse’ can produce an astonishingly wide spectrum of new ideas.”
To explore the possibilities of type, Brody works primarily with Freehand and Fontographer. “Like everyone, I have five or six applications open at the same time and I’ll be dragging stuff from window to window. I drag stuff from Photoshop into Freehand, do some interesting things with outlining, drag that into Fontographer, publish that as a font and use the font back in Photoshop.”
Asking Why
Today, Brody is as dogged about his vision for design and typography as he is about pushing the boundaries of his own work. “This is actually quite a difficult time in graphic design,” he confesses. “There are a lot of highly-skilled, highly professional designers out there. But so many people are caught up with the ‘what’ or ‘how’ of what they’re doing; not many are asking ‘why?’
“There are levels in typography that are communicated exactly the same time as the words that we read.”
“Often people forget,” he elaborates, “that how clever you are with the latest technology is not the point. The equivalent would be like someone coming up to you and saying ‘Have you seen this book? It’s printed on great paper!’
“The true challenge,” Brody emphasizes, “is what messages are you putting over? How do you want people to feel about the work you’re doing? It’s a dialog. It’s never a monolog. Wherever possible, we’ve consciously tried to make sure that visual communication is an open-ended process.
“If I manage to create a situation where someone had to think twice about something they’re doing, I would call that a success. I think the objects I leave behind are not the legacy I’m interested in. It’s whether I can leave behind a thought process.”
