I’m a big fan of Barnbrook’s and I am lucky enough to say this is the second time I have heard him give a lecture.
- Hasn’t had a job as thinks design studios produce shit work.
- You can do what you want if you stick to it and make sacrifices.
- Where is Graphic Design in society?
- Economics and digital have forced us to blur the boundaries between skills, graphic designers are expected to be good at a few things.
- He was once told “You are a citizen first and a graphic designer secondly”
Political Work - Occupy London
Barnbrook was asked to re-design the Occupy London logo, although it had to be put forward to a democratic vote against 5 other. Barnbrook’s logo was chosen! the other logos contained images of people marching and clenched fists which is something we need to move away from. Barnbrook chose to use simple graphics to translate a clear and concise point, through using a circle and an arrow in red and black. The newspaper for Occupy London uses one of Barnbrook’s fonts called bastard. It is a blackletter typeface designed in 1990. which was intended to be used by corporate fascists.
Olympukes
If Barnbrook doesn’t reference other designers, why does he think it is important for students to have practicing guest lecturers like himself do lectures? Barnbrook said that he doesn’t do any work for the likes of coca cola as it would be hypocritical for himself and towards students. In the past he has worked a lot with Damien Hirst and most recently with Bowie. Barnbrook commented that record covers don’t get discussed anymore like they used to, people just tend to say whether the design is good or not. The album cover he designed for Bowie’s The Next Day album took 2 months to arrive at a final design after going through various ideas. The project had to be kept a secret until it’s release and so Barnbrook had to use the codeword table whenever talking about the album cover design. Several attempts later on the design and things still weren’t working, Bowie suggested turning the image he had chosen to use from a few years back upside down. They decided to settle on using the album cover from the Heroes album which represented Bowie in his youth looking forward. Inside the album cover, Barnbrook intentionally chose the colours to clash with regards to the lyrics as he said you can get all of that kind of information online these days, and so the print inside was just a nod to them. Some of the lyrics were chosen to stand out (and the next day, and the next, and another day) which Bowie had referenced from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth (tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow). It’s the why not the how that is important. The vinyl label is a white square and as there’s no right way to hold a record up the text is printed all around the square. The white square was very important in the design as it was translated into all of the advertising for the album release and was applicable to any format, fast food, perfume, consumer desirables, luxury hotels poster, it was anti advertising.
“Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming”
Online the campaign continued for the album where by the public were invited to create their own versions of the album cover.
Why design a new typeface?
- Expression of language. Double think - George Orwell 1984. Anthony burgess - Fuck it!
- To improve society. Modernist utopia.
- Using our past to create something new.
- To create beauty. Mason 1992 (Originally Manson after the serial killer) letterforms taken from architecture
PART 2!
You shouldn’t work for who you think you should work for but with who you want to work with, if you don’t ask you don’t get.
Barnbrook was on the curating team for the V&A show “Bowie is...” He said it is difficult to show music in an exhibition without it looking like all other exhibitions about music. The level of design that needs to be used, needs to show that you care about the people who like Bowie. Not everyone will get the design but it’s important to those who will. A phrase was printed onto all of the exhibition tickets which changed every three hours, the V&A didn’t understand why you would need to do this but it was important to make the show become something different. The exhibition was designed by theatre set designers who also worked on the opening of the olympics
If you work in another language you have to understand how to play with it. Hirst books 1997 - Barnbrook explained flicking through it like flicking through the tv channels, there’s no right part of the book to start with and that every page was like it’s own record cover, each had it’s own design.
People tend to commission what they can see, so you have to show them what you can imagine. The Barnbrook studio tend to work on about 70% commission work and 30% their own personal work.
Vernacular design - use the things around you to create design.
First Things First Manifesto 2000 Various authors This manifesto was first published in 1999 in Emigre 51.
We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it. Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best. Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse. There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help. We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design. In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart. Jonathan Barnbrook Nick Bell Andrew Blauvelt Hans Bockting Irma Boom Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Max Bruinsma Sian Cook Linda van Deursen Chris Dixon William Drenttel Gert Dumbar Simon Esterson Vince Frost Ken Garland Milton Glaser Jessica Helfand Steven Heller Andrew Howard Tibor Kalman Jeffery Keedy Zuzana Licko Ellen Lupton Katherine McCoy Armand Mevis J. Abbott Miller Rick Poynor Lucienne Roberts Erik Spiekermann Jan van Toorn Teal Triggs Rudy VanderLans Bob Wilkinson |
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