brownjohn
Robert Brownjohn
Graphic Designer (1925-1970)
15 October 2005 to 26 February 2006
Design Museum Exhibition
Combining audacious imagery with ingenious typography, illustration and found objects, Robert Brownjohn (1925-1970) was among the most innovative graphic designers in 1950s New York and 1960s London, where he designed titles for James Bond films, graphics for the Robert Fraser Gallery and artwork for the Rolling Stones.
Throughout his life Robert Brownjohn loved music. Many of his closest friends were musicians and his most playful and inspiring work was related to music. When it came to designing an album cover for the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1958, he fused his love of music and of typography by transforming blocks of disused wooden type and wooden bricks from his daughter Eliza’s playbox into a striking graphic composition which is also a commentary on the process of typographic production.
He did so by replacing the orderly arrangement of type by a skilled typesetter with a higgledy-piggledy collage of wooden blocks. The type on the sculpture runs from right to left, and, to make it legible, the photographic image was reversed. Witty and intriguing, the wooden collage typifies the intellectual rigour and underlying humour that characterised Brownjohn’s work. It also demonstrates the appreciation of the everyday objects that tend to be taken for granted that he had inherited from his teacher László Moholy-Nagy at the Institute of Design in Chicago during the 1940s.
Famed for his flamboyant lifestyle as well as for the quality of his design ideas, Brownjohn was an influential figure in graphic design in both 1950s New York and 1960s London before his untimely death of a heart attack in 1970 a few days before his 45th birthday. In his audacious choice of images – from the bare breasts on a poster for Robert Fraser’s Obsession exhibition, to the gold-painted female torso in his Goldfinger titles – Brownjohn captured the experimental spirit of the 1960s by introducing the progressive ideas of Moholy-Nagy to popular culture in inspired juxtapositions of type and image.
Emily King
Robert Brownjohn:
Sex and Typography
240 pages
230 x 190 mm
ISBN 1 85669 464 X
£25.00 hardback
Laurence King Publishing, London 2005
Robert Brownjohn's cult status is justly deserved. Although his career lasted less than a quarter century, he created more signature pieces than many designers who work three times as long, consistently producing work of the highest quality. Born in New Jersey in 1925, he was taught by László Moholy-Nagy at the Chicago Institute of Design (formerly the New Bauhaus) in the 1940s. He worked in New York in the 1950s and spent the 1960s at the epicentre of swinging London on the King's Road. Best known for his title sequences for the Bond films From Russia With Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964), he produced numerous other influential pieces, and his impact on American and British design was unmistakeable. Brownjohn's death in 1970 deprived graphic design of one of its most brilliant and original minds.
Graphic Designer (1925-1970)
15 October 2005 to 26 February 2006
Design Museum Exhibition
Combining audacious imagery with ingenious typography, illustration and found objects, Robert Brownjohn (1925-1970) was among the most innovative graphic designers in 1950s New York and 1960s London, where he designed titles for James Bond films, graphics for the Robert Fraser Gallery and artwork for the Rolling Stones.
Throughout his life Robert Brownjohn loved music. Many of his closest friends were musicians and his most playful and inspiring work was related to music. When it came to designing an album cover for the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1958, he fused his love of music and of typography by transforming blocks of disused wooden type and wooden bricks from his daughter Eliza’s playbox into a striking graphic composition which is also a commentary on the process of typographic production.
He did so by replacing the orderly arrangement of type by a skilled typesetter with a higgledy-piggledy collage of wooden blocks. The type on the sculpture runs from right to left, and, to make it legible, the photographic image was reversed. Witty and intriguing, the wooden collage typifies the intellectual rigour and underlying humour that characterised Brownjohn’s work. It also demonstrates the appreciation of the everyday objects that tend to be taken for granted that he had inherited from his teacher László Moholy-Nagy at the Institute of Design in Chicago during the 1940s.
Famed for his flamboyant lifestyle as well as for the quality of his design ideas, Brownjohn was an influential figure in graphic design in both 1950s New York and 1960s London before his untimely death of a heart attack in 1970 a few days before his 45th birthday. In his audacious choice of images – from the bare breasts on a poster for Robert Fraser’s Obsession exhibition, to the gold-painted female torso in his Goldfinger titles – Brownjohn captured the experimental spirit of the 1960s by introducing the progressive ideas of Moholy-Nagy to popular culture in inspired juxtapositions of type and image.
Emily King
Robert Brownjohn:
Sex and Typography
240 pages
230 x 190 mm
ISBN 1 85669 464 X
£25.00 hardback
Laurence King Publishing, London 2005
Robert Brownjohn's cult status is justly deserved. Although his career lasted less than a quarter century, he created more signature pieces than many designers who work three times as long, consistently producing work of the highest quality. Born in New Jersey in 1925, he was taught by László Moholy-Nagy at the Chicago Institute of Design (formerly the New Bauhaus) in the 1940s. He worked in New York in the 1950s and spent the 1960s at the epicentre of swinging London on the King's Road. Best known for his title sequences for the Bond films From Russia With Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964), he produced numerous other influential pieces, and his impact on American and British design was unmistakeable. Brownjohn's death in 1970 deprived graphic design of one of its most brilliant and original minds.
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