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Since 1990, London-based Barnbrook Design
has been producing innovative work that combines a mixture of typographic
structure, politics and irony. The studio, which chooses to remain
small, and works on projects without worrying about "bringing in
the money," has created such fonts as Mason and Exocet for Emigre,
plus others released through Barnbrook's own font foundry, Virus.
Barnbrook has collaborated with contemporary artists, including
the much-acclaimed Damien Hirst on the monograph I want to spend
the rest of my life everywhere with everyone, one to one always,
forever now. Currently the studio is preoccupied with work that
questions the critical role of graphic design in society, including
work with Adbusters and specially commissioned pieces of graphic
authorship.
Language is a Virus
Through examples of his own typefaces such as Mason and Exocet,
Prozac (for simplifying meaning), Nixon (for lying with) and Drone
(for text without content), Jonathan Barnbrook will explain why
it is necessary to continue to produce fonts that can uniquely speak
in the voice of a zeitgeist, even though there are thousands already
in existence. Barnbrook will also address the complex process of
naming a font. It used to be that a designer would use his or her
surname to label a life's work. Now it has come to the point where
producing a font is so simple that its identification is analogous
to the naming of a pop song or a painting. If he has time, he will
explain the importance of the history of typography when drawing
contemporary fonts and the connection between Eric Gill's curious
relationship with the canine species and letterform design. |
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