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ABOUT

Brody Fonts (was: Brody Associates, Research Studios, Research Arts UK) [Neville Brody]

Neville Brody (b. 1957, North London) is a famous graphic designer who has influenced the practice of design in the 1990s. He created record covers, did magazine design and was art director for projects for companies like Christian Dior, Nike, and the BBC. His company was first called Research Studios, and then morphed into Brody Associates. In 2018, Brody joined Type Network with a new foundry, Brody Fonts.

Largely focused on typography, Brody has been at the forefront of many developments in type culture, from his hand-drawn headlines for The Face magazine and experimental typographic platform FUSE to global fonts for Coca-Cola, Samsung, and Channel4. Iconic posters by him include the Tyson vs Tubs Tokyo poster from 1988. Check also Pat Tmhu's Brody-style Weather Forecast poster (2012). Other people working on Brody's original site include Mike Williams and Simon Staines.

His early type was experimental, and was collected under the name FUSE fonts. Direct access. He did the following FUSE fonts: in FUSE 1, he started with the experimental font State; in FUSE 5, he published Virtual; at FUSE 6, he published Code; at FUSE 7, he drew Crash (Regular and Cameo); in FUSE 8, he showed us Religion (Order, Obidience, Loss of Faith); at FUSE 9, he did F-AutoSuggestion (1994); in FUSE 11, he published Peep, a font only showing parts of letters; in FUSE 13, Ritual, in FUSE 14, CyberStatic, in FUSE 15, F-City Avenue (1997), in FUSE 16, GeneticsSecond Generation, in FUSE 17, Echo Downloaded, Page Three, in FUSE 18, Lies.

Born in 1957 in London, his fonts include FF Autotrace (1994, a sans family progressively distorted by Fontographer's autotrace feature), F Cyber Static (1997, letters based on layered sequences of halftone dots), Arcadia (1990), Industria (1990, readapted in 2012 by Yautja into the free font Instrumenta), Insignia (1990), Blur (1991; FF Blur is from 1992; see poster), FF Pop (1991, a rectagular font originally made for a German music TV program), FF Dirty (1994), Gothic (1991), Harlem (1991).

In 1993, Neville Brody published the poster font family FF World (FontFont), which used his lettering from his Tyson versus Tubbs Tokyo match poster (1988). This became a free web font in 2010 over at FontFont under the name FF World Wide Web.

In 2006, Neville Brody published Times Modern, designed for The Times. The press release states: The new typeface, called "Times Modern", encapsulates the paper's heritage while adapting to the demands of the new compact format. Like The Times' previous typeface, Times Classic, Times Modern has been designed as a bespoke type family. The Times is the only newspaper to create and use bespoke fonts, all other UK newspapers purchase ready-to-use fonts. The project has been led by Ben Preston, Deputy Editor of The Times, in partnership with Neville Brody, formerly art director of The Face, and lead designer on Actuel, City Limits and Arena magazines. Brody also worked on the redesign of Times2 in 2005. Collaborating with Neville is lead designer Jon Hill supported by Research Studios' Luke Prowse. Jon has worked on many large editorial projects, including the design of supplements for The Guardian, the redesign of Swiss newspaper Le Temps and UK business-to-business magazine Media Week. Twenty-three year old Prowse has created the new Times Modern headline font for the newspaper. That press release has been blasted by the typophiles for being plainly wrong ("The Times is the only newspaper to create and use bespoke fonts, all other UK newspapers purchase ready-to-use fonts." What, and how about The Guardian, for example?) and disrespectful of its designers (you really have to dig through it to learn that Luke Prowse actually did the type work).

And controversy keeps following Neville Brody: in 2009, New Deal, a constructivist typeface, was made for the Micheal Mann film "Public Enemies", starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. The bloggers comment that the type is "rubbish" (sic), and that others such as Chank beat him to this type style.

In 2012, Research Studios published Vetena (HypeForType).

For FIFA's World Cup in 2014, Neville Brody custom-designed Case Brody for England's Nike kit.

In 2015, Neville Brody designed Horseferry and Chadwick for the new visual identity for UK broadcaster Channel 4.

In 2018, Brody Associates announced their custom font, TCCC Unity, for Coca Cola. It was jointly designed by Neville Brody and Luke Prowse.

The first fonts at Brody Fonts in 2018 are BF Bonn (1989-2018) and BF Buffalo. Neville Brody originally designed the geometric sans BF Bonn for The Boon Ausstellungshalle and the Bundeskunsthalles signage and identity systems in 1989-1991. BF Buffalo (2009-2018) is a soft octagonal punk-meets-sci-fi design debuted as an editorial type in 2009 in Arena Homme Plus. It later appeared as the signature face for London's Anti Design Festival. Brody significantly reworked Buffalo with the help of David Jonathan Ross.

Linotype link. Klingspor link. FontShop link. FontFont link.

Short bio. Check out another biography at FontNet. Type Network link.

View Neville Brody's typefaces.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Brody Fonts (was: Brody Associates, Research Studios, Research Arts UK)
 [Designer info]
Monotype link
Behance page
Klingspor Museum page
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Experimental type ⦿ Type design and constructivism ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Religious symbols ⦿ Corporate typefaces ⦿ Soccer typefaces ⦿ Corporate typefaces ⦿ Octagonal typefaces ⦿