On Wednesday 24th January, Graphic Designer Neville Brody visited NUA to deliver a talk. It was fascinating to hear his unique perspectives and viewpoints on various aspects of design and how he approaches his work, even if the talk didn’t necessarily focus on areas of graphic design that I had a significant personal interest in.
Some quotes from Brody throughout the talk that caught my attention:
- “Graphic Design is dead”
- “Technology has created opportunities”
- “Choice of typeface manipulates interpretation of message”
- (On using solely Pinterest or Google for inspiration) “Your work will only ever look like everything else”
- “All design is political”
- “Logos are kind of dead”
- They are a condensation symbol – when something complex is reduced to a short icon or phrase – these take away substance and context.
- “Language is a distribution system”
- “By pushing things accidentally, you always get coincidences somewhere else”
Brody talked a lot about the reduction of complexity, and how it is not always a positive thing. Social media platforms act as rigid structures that do not allow you to change the way something is presented – only what is presented. Substance is being replaced by instances – some examples being the trend to short form content, people not reading long texts anymore. It used to be words supported by image – now images are supported by words instead. Brody suggests we should reintroduce complexity.
On the topic of the reduction of complexity and social media, Brody advocated for the idea of “Deconstructing the grid”. Our whole space is frequently grid based now – with columns, rows and grids making up many structures of modern society.
I found Brody’s talk to be very thought provoking, with many points on design as a whole being very relevant to my work as a User Experience Designer, creating digital interfaces and platforms. Some of his quotes about typefaces, language, grids and the reduction of complexity will definitely stick with me going forward.
Above are some images taken of Neville Brody’s presentation featuring his work.