Debbie Millman:

We generally don’t think about graphic design when we think about film and television. Yes, there are the opening credits, which are often elaborately designed and produced. I’m talking here about the variety of things we see in scenes. The props, especially in historical dramas, need an American passport, say, from 1949 for your movie, need a pastry box with some lovely period branding on it, need a telegram saying the Titanic is on the way. What you need is graphic designer Annie Atkins. You can see her work in movies like Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch, where the props and sets are so central to the story, they practically steal the show.

Annie Atkins joins me today to talk about her career in film and television and about her brand-new book, Letters from the North Pole. If anyone can make a letter from Santa Claus, look and feel like the real thing, it is most definitely Annie Atkins. Annie, welcome to Design Matters.

Annie Atkins:

Hi, Debbie. Thank you so much.

Debbie Millman:

Annie, you have a warning on your website that I’d like to ask you about. You declare, never, ever use glue on a cutting mat, and I’m wondering what inspired that declaration.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, that’s one piece of advice I like to give to young graphic designers who are starting out in film. When I started in film, I had been a graphic designer for years, but in an ad agency back around the millennium, when we did everything digitally, and working in film, I was suddenly having to use glue for the first time, honestly, since I was a kid probably, and used cutting knives and making things with my hand and various other materials and tools. So, I made a lot of mistakes when I first started, and one was always getting glue on the cutting mat and sticking all my work to it.

Debbie Millman:

Well, you were born and raised in a little village in a remote part of Snowdonia in North Wales named Dolwyddelan, population 300. And I understand the nearest cinema was 25 miles away, and your exposure to movies came through your neighbor’s VCR. What kinds of films were you watching as you grew up?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, we never went to the cinema, really. It was just too far away. You had to go all the way to the coast. But my next door neighbors were one of the first people I knew in the village to get a VCR, and we used to rent movies from the local shop. But, of course, in the village of 300 people, it was very small shop, so quite limited what we were watching. But my neighbors also taped things off the TV. And really, I suppose, we grew up watching Spielberg. Spielberg movies, movies he wrote and directed and produced, but also all the movies that he inspired as well, because he was such a pioneer of, I suppose, family filmmaking, movies that the whole family would sit down to watch together, things that adults got and children understood, real kind of action adventure films.

Debbie Millman:

Well, we’ll talk about your relationship with Steven Spielberg shortly. Both of your parents worked in creative fields. Your mother was an artist. Your dad was a graphic designer. And I got really excited when I saw that your dad was a graphic designer at the legendary record company Hipgnosis, which designed some of the most recognizable album covers of the 1970s. Do you know which record covers he worked on?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, I was very excited by that when I was a kid because I loved Pink Floyd.

Debbie Millman:

Yes. Did he work on that album?

Annie Atkins:

So, he worked on a few different Pink Floyd albums, I think. I can’t remember which ones exactly. I think Wish You Were Here. I’m not sure, though.

Debbie Millman:

Wow.

Annie Atkins:

But then he was actually on the cover of a Wishbone Ash album because I think he was the assistant on the shoot and he had to get dressed up in the costume. So, that was very exciting to me as well when I was a kid.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, that was exciting to me now. Your mother was an artist and a wildlife illustrator, and I read that she drew every single day and that one of your favorite illustrations of hers is of you asleep in the hospital with this caption, “Annie, one day old,” in pencil underneath it. So, one of the first things your mother did after having a baby was to draw a picture. I found that really quite compelling.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, she drew a lot. She drew all the time. So, she would’ve taken all her pencils and sketchbooks into the hospital with her when she was having me.

Debbie Millman:

While she was in labor.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah. I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that. But my dad, because he was a photographer, he took pictures of my mom giving birth to me as well, so that’s quite nice, too. But yeah, my mom was an artist, but one thing that I always forget to mention really is, when I was a little kid, my mom was actually, for her work, for her paid work, she was actually a cleaner. She was the cleaning lady at the local education center. And she had this lovely story that somebody wanted to give a going away present to somebody as a Van Gogh painting, a print of a Van Gogh painting, and they couldn’t get it on time. And my mom, who was always drawing, said, “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll paint it. I’ll paint a fake.”

And she painted this fake sunflowers by Van Gogh, and it looked so realistic that she started doing this on the side as a side hustle, and she would paint these fake impressionist paintings and sell them to people who would decorate their houses with them. And the local newspaper used to do these pieces on her all the time, calling her this master forger. And so, I have some of those news clippings now. And now, I realize, “Oh, okay, that’s where I got this whole forgery thing from,” because my mom always said the best way to be an artist is to copy. You have to go out there and start imitating other artists and start imitating the world around you. And that’s how you learn to draw, and that’s how you learn to create art.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I love the fact, on your first book, you have the drawing of fake love letters, forged telegrams, and prison escape maps as the cover of a match bookcase. So, yeah, she’s embedded in your work. Is she the first person who taught you how to draw?

Annie Atkins:

Probably, she must have been. Although, I have to say straight away, I don’t really consider myself someone who can draw. I’m really not an illustrator. I think, if you want to be an illustrator, you have to be able to draw people, and I definitely can’t draw people. I would really consider myself a graphic designer and a writer. And I do some illustration, but it’s very, very naive illustration. It’s really the basic stuff. If I need proper illustration, I always hire a real illustrator.

Debbie Millman:

Your parents also ran a design business, a graphic design business together in rural North Wales, creating artwork for the heritage sector. It included creating information boards at scenic points and design maps and nature trails for the national trust. And is it true that you still have a sketchbook from when you were five years old that has your name on the front with the title graphic designer?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Did you make that or did your parents make it for you?

Annie Atkins:

I think my dad made that for me at work. So, he was a graphic designer. And then, eventually, my mom quit her cleaning job and he quit his graphic design job and they set up a business together.

Debbie Millman:

Now, because both of your parents were artists, you’ve said that there seemed no question that you would also take that path. Did you ever have thoughts about a different kind of career as you were growing up?

Annie Atkins:

Not really, no. I really wanted to be a graphic designer like my dad. That’s really what I wanted to do. I pictured myself as growing up in this swanky office sitting at a drawing board. That’s what I thought being a graphic designer was.

Debbie Millman:

And, of course, that’s what it is. Aside from your Annie Atkins graphic designer sketchbook, what other kinds of things were you making as a young person?

Annie Atkins:

We did lots of crafty stuff. My mom, also, another side project of hers was that she taught art in the local primary school. So, she was always doing projects with me, like making paper mache, making puppets. We did a lot of puppetry. Really, just making anything, anything where you could just get a bit messy. And, of course, now that I’m a parent, I realize my mom was just trying to keep me busy. You’ve just got to give kids so much to do. Just give them as many materials as you can and let them make stuff.

Debbie Millman:

You studied visual information design at Ravensbourne University. I believe that was in London, is that correct?

Annie Atkins:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

And at that point, you anticipated you would work at an advertising agency after you graduated, which you ended up doing. You said you didn’t think there was any other option. Why is that?

Annie Atkins:

So, I suppose, advertising in London was booming at the time, and that’s where all the jobs were. I had just never considered anything else. We were all being given internships in ad agencies in London, and I just didn’t really consider anything else, to be honest. And then I got a job in an ad agency in Reykjavík, in Iceland. I mean, also, I know, of course, there’s tons of other graphic design jobs. It just hadn’t occurred to me to do anything else.

Debbie Millman:

What made you decide to go to Iceland? You worked at McCann Erickson. Did you go there to work for McCann Erickson, or did you go there because you really wanted to go to Iceland?

Annie Atkins:

No, I went off on my adventures. So, after I graduated, my dad had lived in Iceland briefly when he was young. He worked in a dark room there, I think, just for summer. And so, he had always talked to us about Iceland when we were kids growing up, saying what a wonderful place. It was a strange and wonderful place. So, I was really interested in going there. So, I went off on my adventures, took my backpack. I took my portfolio with me. And when I arrived, I started going around the agencies until I found a job.

Debbie Millman:

What kinds of clients did you have and what kind of work were you doing back then?

Annie Atkins:

So, I started off as a junior designer. So, the ad agency was very swanky. I got my wish. I just remember there was a pool table, there were leather couches. Everything in the agency was red and black, which I thought was extremely cool. Everybody had asymmetrical haircuts. Yeah, it was really…

Debbie Millman:

Did you end up getting one?

Annie Atkins:

I got an asymmetrical haircut, yes, I did. It was a really exciting time. And the clients were big car companies, Mitsubishi, Iceland telecom, internet providers. Iceland was very high-tech at the time. It still is. I think it always has been, to be honest. And I was making brochures and magazine adverts. I don’t think I was making them particularly well.

Debbie Millman:

I read that you said that, while you initially loved it, you realized that you weren’t very good at advertising.

Annie Atkins:

No.

Debbie Millman:

Why not, really?

Annie Atkins:

No, I wasn’t good at advertising design. I wasn’t good at corporate design, commercial design. It was corporate design, but it was also corporate design in a Scandinavian aesthetic. So, it was all very fresh and crisp and clear and digital, like perfect kerning, beautiful white space, muted color palettes. And I really struggled with it, coming from a much more tactile background, messy background, I suppose, for want of a better word. I suppose, eventually, I did learn how to imitate it, but I never really felt that it was my thing. I definitely didn’t excel at it.

And it was disappointing because I spent my whole life wanting to be a designer. So, it was disheartening. At the time, I was also writing because I was writing a blog. Blogs were big back in 2006. And I remember going to talk to my boss at the agency, the creative director. And I said to him, “I just think maybe I’m not doing really well with design here, and maybe I should be doing something else.” And he said, “Well, actually, I’ve been reading your blog and I think maybe you should do something else. Maybe you should go and do something with a bit more emotion in it,” which was really amazing to hear because that’s not what I had been thinking, really.

But I think it was true that I needed to do something with a bit more emotion. And my idea was that I would go to film school where I would learn how to be a screenwriter or a director or something like that. So, I left Reykjavík, and I came to Dublin and I went to study film production here.

Debbie Millman:

And you got a master’s degree in film production. Is that not right?

Annie Atkins:

Yes. So, it was a very broad degree film production. It’s a little bit of everything. We did screenwriting, directing, producing, editing, even a bit of acting, set design, all kinds of things. And, of course, what happened in that year that I spent at film school was that I realized I did love design. Of course, it was design I loved all along. It’s just that, now, I had this world of design for film opened up to me.

Debbie Millman:

In one of your classes, the production designer, Tom Conroy, came in to teach. He was designing, at the time, the Showtime series, The Tudors, which was in its second season, and you were able to show him your portfolio, and he suggested that, when you finished your courses, you could come in for a job interview. What kind of work was he seeing in your portfolio that excited him so much for him to invite you in to potentially get a job?

Annie Atkins:

Well, my course leader, Leon, said to me, “Listen, we’ve got Tom Conroy coming in.” He’s the production designer of big TV show at the time. “You really need to get your portfolio under his nose,” because he knew that I had been a graphic designer in my past life. So, I did. I showed it to him. But actually, I think what caught Tom’s attention was, at the time, we were designing a set for a college project, and I was sticking up lettering on a detective’s door. You know detective’s doors, glass doors have their name in gold foil.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, in their window pane, right?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah. And I was sticking that up very confidently, and I think Tom liked that. He was like, “Oh, you look like you’re good with your hands. And that’s the kind of thing we’re looking for in film.” So, yeah, he invited me to come in for an interview. I thought I was interviewing for an assistant job in the art department, but he said, “Look, we’re actually looking for a graphic designer.”

Debbie Millman:

And you ended up with a full-time graphic designer position on the show?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, on a show set in the 15th century. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even understand why they would need a graphic designer on a show like that.

Debbie Millman:

I read that you said you couldn’t understand why this show would need a graphic designer on a show that was set in the 16th-century royal court, which was a period before graphic designers existed. And I loved that. What did you end up discovering? It seems like you were really thrown into the deep end. You were a full-time designer, graphic designer, on a show, never having worked in television before and really only beginning your career as a graphic designer in film and television.

Annie Atkins:

It was so scary. I’m just totally thrown in at the deep end. Really, I was so clueless about the workload. I did have a little bit of training. So, the departing graphic designer spent a week with me [inaudible 00:16:28].

Debbie Millman:

Oh, a whole week?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, a whole week. And she explained everything to me in that week, and it was so overwhelming. I couldn’t believe the amount of work that had to be done. And not just the work that we had to create, like the royal scrolls and the stained glass and the wallpaper patterns and the calligraphy, whatever else there was to make in Tudor times, but also, the management of it all, ordering all the right paper, keeping an eye on the schedule, making sure you had everything ready for the shoot, understanding that the shoot doesn’t work in story order, so you have to think a little bit differently time-wise. Yeah, it was completely overwhelming. And when I teach my students now, I always say to them, “Part of what we’re going to do here is make sure that you don’t feel as overwhelmed when you start your first job as I was when I started mine.”

Debbie Millman:

I read that you taught Jonathan Rhys Meyers how to use a quill on that television show. How did you learn to use one? And what was it like teaching him?

Annie Atkins:

I don’t think I taught Jonathan Rhys Meyers, actually. I think that’s Chinese whispers, because I started The Tudors on the third season. So, Jonathan Rhys Meyers would’ve already known how to use a quill at that point. But I did teach Henry Cavill how to use a quill.

Debbie Millman:

Even better.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, even better.

Debbie Millman:

He’s one of the most handsome men on the planet.

Annie Atkins:

He is one of the most handsome men on the planet. And also, it was my first job in film. I was really not used to being around actors at all. I was so nervous around them. I still am, to be honest. I think actors have a very strange energy. They’re so personable constantly. So, I always feel a bit awkward around them. I’m much better at my desk with my head down, scribbling away, than I am chatting with famous people. But yes, I had to teach Henry Cavill how to use a quill. And at that point, I didn’t even know how to use a quill myself, to be honest. So, we just figured it out together.

But I think the main thing was that, whenever I teach an actor how to use an old dipping pen, I find that they always try to do it very quickly because they see signing an official document as something that’s to be done with great flair, “I signed this document for the king.” But actually, calligraphy is very slow process, and you have to dip the nib in the ink very, very slowly. And it’s quite repetitive and laborious. So, you have to try and get them to slow down a little bit. They usually end up asking for a hand double.

Debbie Millman:

One of the things I learned in your first book was that finding the right calligrapher for a historical drama is actually really tricky because they have to, not only be fluent in the various letter forms of the period, but their hands also need to be the right gender, age, and skin tone to stand in for the cast members as hand doubles. I had no idea I am going to be looking at all period movies in a completely different way, looking to see if I can spot the difference in a person’s hands.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah. You know the shot where it’s a real close-up on the ink?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Annie Atkins:

It’s the Dickensian character is beginning to write their important letter, and then you cut to a wide, and it’s the actor in their costume. But the hand is usually the hand of a calligrapher.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that teaching somebody or engaging someone to do calligraphy, an actor, to do calligraphy is often more difficult than their sex scenes.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah. I think it’s easier for an actor to do their own sex scenes or stunts than it is to do their own calligraphy. Calligraphy is tricky. It’s really difficult.

Debbie Millman:

When did you realize that this type of work you were creating was actually your calling?

Annie Atkins:

I think, for the first few years, I probably felt like I was winging it. And then, somewhere along the line, I must have got the hang of it, because I did a few different period shows here in Dublin. We do a lot of historical drama here. And I think I just… everything is just practice, right? You can’t get good at anything unless you practice. You have to practice it every day. And the good thing about film is you create so many pieces every day that, if you do three or four movies or shows, you will be good at it.

So, I think, by the time I was working on a TV show, it was a TV show about the Titanic, about the building of the Titanic. And it wasn’t a great show, actually. I don’t think it did very well. But the things we were making for it were wonderful because it was the first show I’d ever worked on that was set in a period after the invention of the printing press. So, I had gone from making scrolls and stamped potato-printed materials and fabrics and things, to suddenly now making letterpress imitation pamphlets and newspapers. I hadn’t done a newspaper before then. Cigarette packaging, all these printed items. And I found that really thrilling. And I think I was getting the hang of it by then.

Debbie Millman:

Since then, you’ve worked on the television shows, including Camelot, Penny Dreadful, which was created by Oscar-winning director, Sam Mendes and James Bond writer John Logan. One of your biggest and most lauded projects has been working with Wes Anderson, particularly, on the Oscar-winning film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, in 2014. How did you first meet Wes Anderson? And what was the experience of interviewing for that job like?

Annie Atkins:

It was actually the Titanic TV show that I had just wrapped. After that, I began to feel like I wanted to do something because I’d done a lot of historical drama, and I began to feel like I wanted to do something a little bit more imaginative, maybe a bit more creative. So, I got in touch with the animation studio LAIKA in Portland Oregon, because I had heard a rumor that they were about to start a movie that was set in the 1800s. And I thought to myself, “Oh, that would be interesting to blend historical design with animation.” Children’s animation is very much a heightened more imaginative design.

So, I reached out to them, I sent them my portfolio, and the answer came back from the arts director saying, “Thank you for sending us this work. If you’re ever on the West Coast, you could call into us and we could have a look at your portfolio.” And I thought, the West Coast, I’m never on the West coast. I live on the east coast of Ireland. I’m not going to be on the West Coast ever. But I did have a friend of a friend who lived in San Francisco. So, I called her up and I went to stay with her. And then I called LAIKA again, and I said, “Okay, I’m on the West Coast.” And they said, “Okay, well, you better come in and show us your portfolio then.”

And that was a rigorous interview process. Now, I had three interviews for that job, which seemed a lot to me at the time. I remember one of their questions was, “You’ve done a lot of historical design and we can see you’re good at research and imitating realistic documents from the past, but how do you think you could apply that to a more heightened imaginative design? The kind of things that we’re doing here in LAIKA?” And I remember just trying to think off the top of my head, and I said, “Yes.” I said, “I do have that. But if you look at my personal work, you’ll see that it’s much more flamboyant. It has much more flair and color. And I think what I can do for you is marry those two things together.” And they said, “Okay, good answer. You’re hired.”

Debbie Millman:

Wow. Did you have to show them that personal portfolio? Did they just take your word for it?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, I showed them, yeah. So, what I had been doing in my spare time was just making my own artwork, like fake movie posters, theater posters, just anything where I could be a little bit more imaginative.

Debbie Millman:

And so, working for LAIKA, how did that lead to working with Wes Anderson?

Annie Atkins:

So, yes, that was the connection. So, the head arts director at LAIKA was Nelson Lowry, and he had designed Fantastic Mr. Fox for Wes a couple of years previously. So, when Wes was coming to Europe to do Grand Budapest Hotel, he was looking for European graphic designer. And he asked Nelson at LAIKA, “Do you know any European graphic designers?” And he said, “Well, yes, I know someone in Ireland.”

So, then one day I was just sitting in my studio here in Dublin, and I got a text message from Nelson, and all it said was, “Something wicked your way comes.” And I thought, “That’s strange. What does this mean?” And then, an hour later, the phone rang. And it was a New York number, which was exciting in itself because nobody from New York had ever called me before. It was Wes’ producer. And she said, “We’re coming to Europe. We’re making a film that’s set between the wars. And we’re wondering, do you have any examples of early 1900s graphic design in your portfolio?” Because I’d done the Titanic TV show, and then I’d also done an animated movie, The Boxtrolls, with LAIKA, I was able to show them tons of work from that period, from late 1800s early 1900s, which was both historically correct in places and then imaginative in other places. And I think that’s how I got the job.

Debbie Millman:

I want to talk to you about some of the things that you made for Grand Budapest Hotel, but I also want to talk a little bit about the way in which you work before we get to those kinds of very specific details. In addition to working with Wes Anderson, and you’ve worked with him now on a number of films, you’ve also worked with Steven Spielberg on several films, Todd Haynes. Do different directors have different approaches to how design is deployed in their movies?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, I think so. Definitely. I mean, Wes Anderson is very hands-on. I’ve done three Wes Anderson movies, so I did Grand Budapest Hotel, French Dispatch, and Isle of Dogs, which was animated. I think Wes is very different to any other director I’ve worked for because he’s so hands-on, it’s really his art and he’s involved with every little detail and every process, and I’m not just talking about fun stuff like design. But I’m also talking about, I’ve seen him help stagehands carry sandbags across the set. He’s just right there with everybody, so he’s a really amazing director to work with in that regard. Whereas Spielberg, I don’t think I ever really talked to Spielberg directly on either of the two movies that I did for him, except when it was really specific direction about a newspaper headline that was going to be shown really in close-up. Whereas on a Wes Anderson movie, I would get 30 emails a day or something, maybe even more than that.

Debbie Millman:

Now, what is your official title when you’re working in movies or television?

Annie Atkins:

Graphic designer.

Debbie Millman:

You’re a graphic designer for what is considered props. Is that correct?

Annie Atkins:

Well, really the graphic designer works for a few different departments. So if it’s something that the actors have to handle, then it’s a prop. If it’s something that’s built into the set, like an actual piece of construction design, like say a big billboard or a piece of stained-glass or something like that, then it would be for the art departments and the construction crew. And then if it’s a piece of dressing like patterns for curtains, then you would be working for the set deck department. And then sometimes you might even do something with the costume department. If you have a movie that has a lot of uniforms in it, like a police presence, then you’ll be making badges and things for the uniforms. And then sometimes we also work with other departments as well, but rarely, I can’t think of one off the top of my head maybe.

Debbie Millman:

So there’s so much range in what you do.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, so I mean I use the term props because people understand what a prop is, but actually it’s more than that.

Debbie Millman:

So it’s really anything that has lettering or an illustration or some sort of pattern. So that would include telegrams, packaging, maps, love letters, books, poems, food packaging, labels, passports, shopping bags, police reports, wills, menus, fake CIA identification cards, anything with paper with letters on it.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah. Maybe even a birthday cake if it had to have a name on it.

Debbie Millman:

It sounds like the dreamiest job in all of graphic design, frankly.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, it does sound good. It does sound good. And all those things you listed there are really fun, interesting things, and a lot of what we do for film is really fun.

Debbie Millman:

Now, I learned again from your book that one of the best ways to explain what is going on in a movie is with a newspaper headline. Why is that?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, I think directors really use newspaper headlines as narrative storytelling devices because you want to establish what’s going on in the world when the story begins. So are you going to shoot a million dollar war scene or are you going to show somebody eating their breakfast reading a newspaper that says there’s a war on? Yes, we use newspaper headlines a lot. It’s not always historically accurate. British broadsheets didn’t even have headlines on the front pages.

Debbie Millman:

Did they have ads on the front?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, small ads. I think pre-World War I, they didn’t have headlines on the front pages at all, but it doesn’t really matter. We need to use a little bit of artistic license. I always think as long as you know your onions as a graphic designer, then you can present that information to the director or the production designer or whoever it is that you’re working for and say, “This is what newspapers actually looked like in 1917. Or we can just put a headline on because you’re telling a story,” and 9 times out of 10 the director’s going to say, “We’re telling a story here,” and that’s totally fine.

Debbie Millman:

How do you get started working on a television show or a film? How much research do you do before you actually make anything?

Annie Atkins:

I would generally start researching straight away as soon as I get the job, and then we usually get a few weeks prep. And prep is the weeks before the camera starts rolling, and in that time I’ll start researching the period, start collecting my reference material and do things like get my paper order in, do my script breakdown, really familiarize myself with the script and all the different locations and sets and then start making the big things or the things that look like they’re going to be shot on first. And then as soon as the camera starts rolling, you’re basically just playing catch up all the way through until the direct calls wrap.

Debbie Millman:

Do you do most of your work on set or do you do most of your work remotely?

Annie Atkins:

So film graphic designers usually work in the art department office, which is usually in a studio next to the set, but these days I work completely remotely. A few years ago I made the decision to go remote and to just have my own studio here in Dublin. It wasn’t great at first because this was back before the pandemic. I think people in film at that point really preferred to have you within yelling distance, to be honest. But then the pandemic happened, and of course everybody went remote, so it was more acceptable then.

Debbie Millman:

As graphic designers in film, you’ve detailed how you have two main priorities when starting to design any proper set piece, and the first is to set the period, and the second is to set the location so that when the audience starts watching a movie, they instantly know where the story is being told and when it’s taking place. What are some techniques you use in doing that? In establishing those two directives?

Annie Atkins:

Everybody who’s working in film is doing the same thing. People are doing it with costume, people are doing it with location work, and we’re doing it in the art department as well. And I think the beauty of film design is you can be really obvious about things. If you need to show that we’re in New York, you show everybody on the train reading the New York Times or whatever it is. I think also different places have quite distinct looks in their graphic design. London has a very distinctive look. We really associate London with black and red and that lovely deep blue color. So yeah, you can go super obvious with this and really let people know where they are.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that part of what you’re designing for the cast and the directors is helping them create a fully realized world for them to walk into in the morning and help them stay in character and help them understand the period more and help them understand the way things worked in a specific time or a specific place. Do you have some favorite experiences doing that that stand out to you?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, I think we have to remember that most of what we make in the art department, especially small little detailed things like graphic design, most of that is never seen by the movie camera or the audience. This stuff all blends into the background. So I do feel like sometimes what we’re doing is designing for the cast and for the director so that when they arrive on set in the morning and they walk into this beautiful set that the art department and the set department have spent a lot of time and money on creating and they look at these tiny little details that the graphics department have dressed in, then it’s really going to help transport them to another time or place.

I like to think that these little details can help nudge actors a little bit further into character. I mean, the truth is actors can probably act in front of a green screen, but we are world-building and it’s our job to make a world for them that they walk into and they pick these little things up and they go, “Oh wow, now I am in 19th-century East End London” or wherever it is.

Debbie Millman:

Well, even though people aren’t necessarily registering it as the first thing they see, even if it’s in their peripheral vision on a screen, it’s helping to establish a mood and a feeling and sort of an understanding of the world that’s being created in a really, really powerful way. And especially with your work, which really elevates that experience, I think, to a much sort of more meaningful degree.

Annie Atkins:

Well, you can be very detailed with graphic design and you can also write, because nearly all the graphics that we make, paper graphics to dress us out need to have content in them. They need to have written content. And that doesn’t come from the script. Sometimes it does if it’s a hero prop and if it’s something really important to the story, but all the other little love letters and telegrams and bits and pieces that we have to dress an office scene with has to have content on it. So if you can keep writing in the atmosphere of the scene, whatever drama is unfolding in that scene, then you can really help start create an atmosphere that’s going to be believed by the cast.

Debbie Millman:

One thing that I had absolutely no idea about that I love knowing is that you will sometimes or often use crew names for things like gravestones and newspaper bylines. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, we do use crew names, so we wouldn’t use crew names on a Wes Anderson job. A Wes Anderson job would always have a specific list of names that he has probably written himself honestly. But on TV shows that I’ve worked on, yeah, we would just go to the crew list and use crew names to pepper around all the bits and pieces that need names and addresses on and it goes through legal clearance. But often crew names don’t really work for a period piece. Like for a period piece, you want the names to sound period as well. So I think a good way to do it is to go to a census that was taken at the time and use names from that list, but then they all have to be cross-checked by legal to make sure that nobody’s been implicated in some kind of crime. Like someone, the character in your movie who owns the gun shop, there isn’t a real person who owns a gun shop with the same name for example.

Debbie Millman:

Let’s talk about the making of the beautiful and now coveted Mendl’s Box in Grand Budapest Hotel. How did you go about making that? And did you have any sense at all that it was going to become such a viral piece of graphic design in a movie?

Annie Atkins:

No, I had no idea. When you’re working on a film, you really have no idea what it’s going to be like because you are concentrating on these teeny tiny little details and there’s a director and a production designer thinking about the bigger picture. So no, I had no idea that the Mendl’s Box was going to become this kind of almost iconic piece of design that illustrated the movie.

Debbie Millman:

I know you’ve talked about it before, and I hate to be redundant, but it’s such a juicy story and I just want to make sure my listeners hear it from you. Talk about the spelling of the word patisserie.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. I love this story too. It’s totally fine. I knew that the Mendl’s Box was going to feature heavily in the film because in the script it popped up again and again and again, and it was Wes who chose that lovely pink color and the lovely blue of the ribbon. I think in an early iteration, the Mendl’s Box was green, which I can’t imagine now.

In fact, I think a lot of the early work that we did for Grand Budapest Hotel, there was a lot of mint green. I remember Adam, the production designer coming in one day and saying, “Okay, we’re changing the color palette for the hotel. It’s going to be pink, it’s going to be red, it’s going to be purple, it’s going to be gold.” And I remember thinking, “Is that going to work?” Little did I know. This is why I’m a graphic designer and not a production designer. So I was working away concentrating on the little details. But of course, the lettering for the Mendl’s Box was done by hand. So the actual word Mendl’s was drawn by our illustrator, Jan Jericho, and then I drew all the little texts in all the other areas. And because it was drawn by hand, there was no spell check, and I put two Ts in the word patisserie and it went to print.

We screen-printed those boxes. I think we made 300 boxes and nobody noticed until about halfway through the shoot, and I think it was actually Wes himself who noticed, because there’s one shot in that movie where it’s real close up. It’s like a zoom into the box, and with a zoom shot, there’s nothing worse than a Zoom shot on a spelling mistake. So we had to remake the box for all the scenes that we had left with it in, and then anything we’d already shot had to be fixed in post, which is pretty laborious really. So I was quite embarrassed actually at the time. But Wes Anderson crews are very nice crews. They were all right about it, thank goodness.

But then after the movie was released and the Mendl’s Box became this kind of icon for the movie, what happened was people started selling bootleg versions of it, like their own knockoffs. But of course at that point they didn’t know about the spelling mistake, so they were making boxes that had the right spelling on them. And I said, “The real boxes from the movie, all the 300, wherever in the world they went, they’ve all got the spelling mistake on them. So if you see that for sale on eBay, then you should buy that one.”

Debbie Millman:

Well, there are YouTube tutorial videos to show people how to make “A functionally accurate Mendl’s Box” and there are a whole slew of people selling admitted replicas on Etsy and merch from the movie on Redbubble. I can’t think of any other movie that has that type of rabid following for accurate material from a movie. I think it’s incredible. It’s truly incredible.

Annie Atkins:

It is incredible, and I mean it an amazing experience to work on a film like that because it’s just the way Wes created those scenes and those designs. He really made a character out of the graphic design. So how lucky was I to work on such a beloved movie that had such a spotlight shone on the graphics? It’s a film I hold very close to my heart.

Debbie Millman:

Was there ever any conversation about keeping the two Ts in as sort of a moment of charm? Because I mean, the movies are quirky. Why wouldn’t it have an intentional misspelling?

Annie Atkins:

No, I don’t think Wes Anderson would let an accidental mistake into one of his movies. It would have to have been deliberate from the get-go, I think.

Debbie Millman:

Now you mentioned people potentially having an original box from the movie, your first book, Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, Prison Escape: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking. That book came out in 2020 and it was a bit of a combination monograph and tutorial, but it featured a lot of material from your movies. Are those all part of a personal collection? How do you manage to keep all of this material?

Annie Atkins:

Well, you’re supposed to keep one of everything you make back because we don’t just make one of any prop. Even if there’s only one needed for the scene, we have to make what we call repeats, which are identical copies so that if something gets destroyed on set, they can quickly replace it with a new prop. And things get destroyed quite easily actually, because the lights on the set are very hot, actors’ hands are very sweaty. So if you have a delicate love letter, it’s not going to last the day. The standby props team are going to want to keep swapping it out. So I always make extra pieces, and then I always keep one back in the studio so that if we do have to create it again in a hurry at some point, I have it in front of me so I know exactly what it looks like. So yeah, I did have one of each piece that I made.

Debbie Millman:

Annie, let’s talk about your brand new book, Letters from the North Pole. What made you decide to create this book and why a children’s book?

Annie Atkins:

Well, I love children’s books. I read so many children’s books. I have two small children of my own, and we read sometimes upwards of a dozen books a day. I’ve never been very good at playing with toys. I’m a mum who likes to either read to the kids or get on with some jobs, so when they need my attention, we sit down together and cuddle up and read books. So I absolutely love children’s books and especially children’s books that rhyme. It’s like catnip to me somehow. I just love reading rhyming verse. So when I was approached by the publisher, Magic Cat, they had had an idea about a book of letters between kids and Santa Claus with the idea that I would maybe make the letters for them because the book has letters that you can actually pull out and read as if they’ve really come from Santa Claus.

So I was immediately on board. I really wanted to do this project and I wanted to write it, and I wanted to art direct the book myself as well, and I was really, really excited about it. And now it’s going to be released next week.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, it’s a beautiful, beautiful book. It is very unusual. The book has envelopes in it, full size, the same size as the pages, that open up and include a letter that is actually from Santa, and also cards that are almost sort of evidence pages. They describe a toy or a idea that kids that are writing to Santa have that they want Santa to make. And so there’s a tree house and water slide invented by Otto, age six. There’s a remote control parrot invented by Maggie who’s also six. There’s shoes on springs, which I do think might be my favorite, which is an invention by Bon Bon, who’s aged four. And then there’s several others. And there are cards, there are letters, there are pages, there are envelopes. Each piece of ephemera is its own little piece of art. So I want to talk to you about these various elements. So you wrote the book, you wrote all the poems, you wrote all of the letters.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah. It’s about children wishing for toys for Christmas, and they have these ideas for inventions, and they write to Santa, and they’re hoping that Santa is going to put these toys into production in his workshop in time for Christmas. And Santa writes back to the kids and in the envelope from the North Pole that he sends, there’s also a kind of blueprint of the child’s invention as if-

Debbie Millman:

That’s what I meant by the cards. Yeah, it’s a blueprint. Sorry about that part … That word wrong.

Annie Atkins:

No, that’s okay. So almost like he’s had a technical drawing created by an industrious elf in his workshop, and he’s saying, “Yep, we’re going to try and get this made for you.” And then also the children are asking questions about Santa’s existence. They’re saying, “How do you get around the world in one night?” And Santa, he’s not giving away too much information. He’s kind of deftly batting these questions away so that we can retain a bit of an air of mystery about Santa Claus. Because even though I really wanted to write a book about Santa Claus, one of the things I love most about him is that we know very little about him, actually. And that’s the magic, isn’t it? It’s the not knowing. It’s waking up in the morning and seeing the presents and the mince pie and the carrot for the reindeer have gone, and we know he’s been here, but we don’t really know an awful lot more than that.

Debbie Millman:

The letters from Santa are classic Annie Atkins. There are stamps, there are signatures, there’s terms and telegram information. There is a note that says, “Please note that no guarantees can be made as to last minute requests during the busy season.” There’s so much charm. There’s so much wit. One question, why did you put the name Santa Claus in quotes on the stationery?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, that’s a nice little detail. I think it’s because back in the day, a trademark name or a company name would often have quotes around it to show that it was a name. And I thought that was a nice little touch because it’s almost alluding to who is this Santa Claus? Does Santa Claus really exist? I mean, obviously, of course Santa Claus exists, and the book is very, very clear that he exists. But I thought it was a nice little detail.

Debbie Millman:

And I love that you give Santa, the workshop a title, woodworker and toy maker. Santa Claus is a woodworker and a toy maker. Annie, I didn’t ask you this in advance. I don’t know if you have any of the letters at hand. I was wondering if you might read one to us.

Annie Atkins:

Oh, I will. Yeah, I do have one somewhere. Let me have a look.

Debbie Millman:

I also love that they’re all dated different days.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

So many wonderful details.

Annie Atkins:

That was a continuity issue. The children had to be writing to him in December, and they had to get their reply from him in time. So yeah, the dates felt important to me to get right. So this is a letter from Santa to Hannah, and Hannah has had an idea for a kid’s detective set with a disguise in it and various other detective tools so that kids can start their own detective’s business.

“Dear Hannah, you question how in just one night, I go the whole worldwide, but winter nights are long and dark, time is on my side. My deer are brisk, my sleigh is quick, and I’ve had lots of practice racing nighttime as the world is turning on its axis. I was glad to get your letter: a toy detective set. I’ve put it on my list of things I hadn’t thought of yet, but you’ll never ever see me as I tiptoe through your home down the chimney, stockings full, then whoosh away I’ve flow.”

Debbie Millman:

And then it’s signed S. Claus.

Annie Atkins:

I thought it was important that Santa Claus had boundaries. All these kids are wondering if they’re actually going to meet him, and his answer is always a very firm no.

Debbie Millman:

And that’s in each letter. I was very, very surprised to see that in each letter he makes it very clear that he’s not going to be seen.

Annie Atkins:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

So each big envelope has a folded letter. They have the blueprints for each of the inventions. Talk about some of the other ancillary things, the postage stamps, for example, on the envelopes. How much of those did you make?

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, so one of the other kind of problems I felt I had to figure out when I started writing the book was retaining Santa’s air of mystery. If we were going to make a book all about Santa Claus, did I really want to show Santa Claus? I wanted to show him somewhere, but I didn’t want to show him everywhere. And then I thought maybe it would be a nice idea if the only place we ever really see Santa is on the postage stamps that are stuck on the letters that come from the North Pole, because that’s also a very Christmassy thing, isn’t it? Something we’re quite familiar with. We see Santa on postage stamps, so I thought that might make sense.

And our illustrator, Fia Tobing, who did all the lovely illustrations of the children and Santa in the book, she drew those stamps really beautifully. And then there’s other stamps on the envelopes as well. They’re supposed to look like it’s come from halfway around the world. It’s got North Pole franking,

Debbie Millman:

Mailed through the Arctic Express.

Annie Atkins:

Mail stamps, registered letter stamps. If undelivered, please return to sender stamps. It should feel like it’s an important letter that’s come through the letterbox for the kids.

Debbie Millman:

And I love the way each of the letters are addressed to Maggie over the bridge, second house on the left, the Cotswolds, England.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, it feels like that’s an address that only Santa would really be able to use in any kind of useful way.

Debbie Millman:

I think my favorite thing about the book is that the letters are all from Santa, but the inventions are approved by Mrs. Claus. Not Santa. Talk about that decision.

Annie Atkins:

I’m so glad you noticed that. It’s just such a small detail, but it was important to me that Mrs. Claus was also a character in the book, even though we also don’t really see her either. But yes, everything has to be approved by her. It really is her seal of approval at the end of the day.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, she’s the boss lady.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Now, this book feels like it really needs a sequel to use film language, and it really needs to be a letter set that children can make with stamps and signs and all kinds of things that they can sort of co-create with you. Do you have that in mind for the next potential place that this book can grow?

Annie Atkins:

Well, we’re going to do some children’s events in the run-up to Christmas in bookshops, so kids can come in and write their own letters to Santa. And I’m going to bring all my stamping gear with me, rubber stamps and ink pads, and we’ll do some fancy lettering and decorative things, and I’ll bring my vintage post box as well so we can post them too. But I love the idea of actually making a craft set for kids.

Debbie Millman:

Stamp set. I mean, the stamps are so incredible. Every envelope has a completely different collection of stamps on them. It would be so wonderful. Kids love to be able to cut things out and stick things on things, and it just … So do adults, frankly.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

I’m thinking about it more for me than anyone else, but in any case.

Annie Atkins:

Yeah, like a little stationary craft set. That’s a lovely idea. I love it.

Debbie Millman:

Annie, I have one last question for you. I read that one of the best tips you ever received regarding the kit you use on set came from the supervising art director on Vikings from Carmel Nugent. And I’m wondering if you can share that with us because I think it’s sort of a fun little tip for those of us that particularly like measuring tapes.

Annie Atkins:

That’s right. I remember Carmel, the art director saying to me, “Get your measuring tape and paint it with pink nail polish. And that way nobody in construction will walk off with it by mistake.”

Debbie Millman:

I love that. Annie Atkins, thank you so much for making so much work that matters and brings so much joy to people. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Annie Atkins:

Thank you, Debbie. It’s so lovely to chat to you. Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

Annie Atkins’ latest book is titled Letters from the North Pole. You can see lots more about her at annieatkins.com. This is the 19th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Announcer:

Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The Editor-in-Chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.

The post Design Matters: Annie Atkins appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:
Neville Brody is one of the most famous graphic designers of our time, and in the graphic design community, he’s a certifiable rockstar. In fact, you can say he helped create the rock scene of the 1980s when he famously designed album covers for bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, Kurtis Blow, and 23 Skidoo.

He went on to become the art director of The Face magazine in the UK where his experiments in typography and design dazzled and delighted. His work of the ’80s and ’90s was collected in two books that became global bestsellers. Some of his work was seen as so groundbreaking that it’s included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

A third book, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3, came out earlier this year, picking up where his 1994 second edition left off. Neville’s latest is essential reading if you want to understand the evolution of design over the last 40 years. And it’s also a wonderful opportunity to have him back on the show. Neville’s been joining me on the podcast since 2007. Neville Brody, welcome back to Design Matters.

Neville Brody:
Thank you so much, Debbie. It’s such a pleasure to be here again. I didn’t realize it was so long since we last spoke and since we first spoke.

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Neville Brody:
I think a lot of things have changed in that time.

Debbie Millman:
It has. So I want to go back in time a little bit for those that might not have heard our previous interviews. You were born in Southgate, London and began drawing before you could even walk. So does that mean you were a young artist or a late walker?

Neville Brody:
I think both, to be honest, but I always had a creative interest. My father, whilst being quite technical and engineering based, was also a kind of inventor. The British tend to be inventors. We tend to invent things and then we tend to then get other countries and other industries to use that and develop it. But my dad was an inventor. He developed new ideas and so I was kind of born into that space. And yeah, I mean, I don’t know whether I was walking before the age of five. I hope so. But as soon as I could hold a crayon in my hand, I was using it.

Debbie Millman:
What kind of things did your dad invent? This I didn’t know.

Neville Brody:
Well, he spent his life as a camera technician, but during the Second World War, he was based in India where he was teaching the local community how to build radios. But this is something that he self-taught, so he never went to school to learn all of this. He learned everything himself, and eventually ended up running a business, repairing cameras, projectors and Super 8 and sound machines.
And had probably one of the first videotape recorders in the UK way back in the ’70s, and would be constantly inventing new tools, new circuitry, new ideas about how to use cameras. So he always had this incredible, inventive, imaginative mind that he allied to his engineering. And I think that’s something very much that I’ve picked up on.

Debbie Millman:
You said that you knew you were never going to be a train driver or a fireman as a little boy, so the only decision you had to make was whether you wanted to become a fine artist or a designer. And you’ve stated the reason you chose design over fine art was because you thought that fine art was a dishonest industry. So I have two questions. In what way did you think that, and do you still think that?

Neville Brody:
Well, I think at the time when I was going to art school, art was being promoted as something that was just about culture, as being a very pure form, and that advertising and design were the dishonest forms because they were based on persuasion as well as information.

And I felt that that was a dishonest portrayal of fine art, that in fact, fine art had long become a commodity, that it was all about investment. It was all about fame in order to drive further investment. And I felt that that was a very dishonest space where you almost had to have a hit single as a painting, or as a painter, and that then that would manifest as further sales, bigger shows, larger investments, et cetera.

And I just felt that there was something very dishonest about that, where fine art actually wasn’t touching the public. It was a very elite strand of rarefied intellectuals who largely engaged with the art world. Whereas I felt that design and advertising, using mass tools, would actually reach the public even though they were set up for very different reasons.

And the other thing that I understood, and my tutor at the time clarified for me, wonderfully, he said that if you’re an artist, you set your own brief. And without saying it, he was implying that I needed a brief to be set. So designers, advertisers all respond to briefs that are set externally, whereas artists set their own pace and challenges.

And then I took that and ran with it and realized that the challenge I was being set by design and advertising was you need to understand these tools in order to reveal them and in order to use them for different purposes. So taking a very fine art approach, which is a questioning one, but applying it to a field of mass media.

Debbie Millman:
In a very old interview, or actually it wasn’t really an interview, it was an assessment that Rick Poynor did of your career and your work. He said that while you weren’t a fine artist, you had an artist’s self-confidence. And I’m wondering if you would agree with that.

Neville Brody:
I don’t know what that is, and I think-

Debbie Millman:
I think it’s a certain kind of swagger maybe.

Neville Brody:
I think I need to ask Rick. I think that’s a projection. I think Rick has the swagger of an artist as a design critic. So I’ll figure out what he’s talking about there. But I don’t know, I think there was a lot of projection going on in design during the ’80s that people were thinking of designers increasingly as a rockstar, as you mentioned.

But that was never the intention. For me anyway, that was always hoist upon me. I was aware though that raising my profile would help create more exposure to the ideas behind it. So my work then became a shop window to the writing and the thinking. And I realized quite early on that actually the most important thing I could do is do lectures off the back of that, public appearances, talk to people, and use that platform to try and affect the way people were thinking about communication. So I didn’t welcome any of the celebrity positioning, but I felt it was important to use that as a vehicle.

Debbie Millman:
You attended Hornsey College of Art, which in 1968 was the birthplace of the first student sit-in, and it had to do with funding. You got there in 1975. Did the school still have a political undercurrent to it? And if so, did it influence your approach to design? Because you’ve always been, as you’ve just said, very vocal about the purpose or stance of graphic design in culture.

Neville Brody:
Hornsey College of Art at the time was a kind of an independent space, and it had lost its line of connection to those earlier sit-in days. I think that that had been sufficiently or effectively suppressed. But I went to Hornsey, I mean, for two reasons. One, it had a great creative reputation, a phenomenal kind of forward-thinking reputation in terms of experimentation. And at the same time, it was around the corner from where I lived. So it was a convenience and provenance more than anything, but it was a great time for me.

I was there for one year, a foundation course, and sat next to someone called Mike Barson. And Mike Barson later became the lyricist and keyboard player for Madness, the band. And whilst I was doing the course, he was off seeing punk because punk had just started at that point. And he would come in the morning saying, “I’ve seen this great band called the Sex Pistols. You have to go and see them.” And I just thought that was terrifying as an idea.

Debbie Millman:
Why did you think it was terrifying?

Neville Brody:
Well, because everything was quite innocent. This was the days of Genesis, Super Tramp, very middle of the road kind of culture that was going on in the early ’70s, mid ’70s, and David Bowie of course, Roxy Music of course, King Crimson. But these were fairly established nonthreatening bands, and then suddenly there was this band called the Sex Pistols that would go on stage, would be spat at and would spit at the audience, would not know how to play their instruments, were importing violence into their musical genre. And I rejected it. At the beginning I rejected it.

And then when I went to London College of Printing afterwards, in the second year, I suddenly realized what was going on and overnight became a punk. But one thing that became quite clear at the beginning of punk was that there were punks and there were people we called weekend punks. There was that kind of real punk and then copy punk.

And eventually it got reappropriated by advertising. So the cliche punk had all the danger stripped out of it, and it just became a model then that appeared in advertising and picture postcards of London where you’d have punks and mohawks with Westminster Abbey in the background. So it became, very quickly, a stereotyped genre.

But I was probably somewhere between the two, and the last year of art school, I had no income, living in a squat with a hundred other people in Covent Garden in the middle of Central London. Around the corner was the first Paul Smith store, which was at that time really super radical. I was working in a local restaurant washing up at night in order to pay for my student fees, et cetera. And it was probably the worst and the best year of my life. I thought it was amazing. Everyone should squat.

Debbie Millman:
Now, when you say squat, do you mean living in a place illegally without paying rent, or just living in a place that’s very low rent?

Neville Brody:
I mean living in a place illegally without paying rent.

Debbie Millman:
So you were, I believe, in the center of a collapsing, decaying space.

Neville Brody:
Well, it was actually an amazing building. It was 18th or 17th century townhouse in the middle of Covent Garden. And historically it’s where Nell Gwyn had lived once. So it was a beautiful piece of architecture which had gone to rack and ruin because they’d moved the markets out of Covent Garden.
And I remember one night, we had a fire and the roof burnt off, part of it, and in order to go to the bathroom, you had to actually use the bathroom in three foot of snow.

Debbie Millman:
Good thing you’re a man.

Neville Brody:
Well, exactly, exactly. It was quite challenging. And at those times, politically, London was very different. We had, of course, a lot of anti-immigrant action going on. We had the National Front that would frequently march past our squat, and it was quite a dangerous, edgy time. This was just before Margaret Thatcher came in. It was the beginning of the period of the miner strikes. In terms of stability, it was an incredible period of change and possibility as well as being very challenging in terms of living a comfortable life.

Debbie Millman:
What was your college portfolio like?

Neville Brody:
Well, I thought it was interesting.

Debbie Millman:
That’s not a good word.

Neville Brody:
Well, I took the college briefs and then interpreted them in a way that pushed them further. The college taught that there was one way to do everything. If you did a wedding invite or a theater poster or a book cover, in the ’70s, there was a way that you did all of this, and we were there to learn how to do it.
And the London College of Printing at that time had the reputation for being the most strict, extreme graphic design education in Europe, which is why I went there because I knew that if I was going to learn about it, I needed to learn the strictest rules and then I could improvise and use them for different purposes. But my tutors didn’t like that and they didn’t like my work, and they tried to throw me out on a couple of occasions.

In the second year, I’d put the queen’s head sideways on a stamp, and one tutor took such offense that he actually put in process the means to try and actually expel me because of that. And at the end of the three years, my internal tutors failed me. So I had an F on my degree, but the external assessors gave me a First. So there was an incredible contradiction between what was going on inside art education, what was going on in the real world, and ended up with a 2:2, which is sort of a mediocre mark somewhere in the middle.

But it actually came as a shock to the art school and the tutors following all of this. It wasn’t only me, it was a number of other people in my group. The art school had to reconsider everything about the way it was teaching, and it went into a kind of shock. And they did say to me that, A, I hadn’t answered any of the briefs on the course, and B, they said I had zero commercial potential. So thanks guys.

Debbie Millman:
Famous last words. How did you feel about that? At the time, did it bother you? Were you disappointed or upset with the grades that you were getting?

Neville Brody:
I think if they had given me a mediocre mark internally, I think that would’ve been more disappointing. But the fact that they’d failed me felt like a powerful, let’s say, catalyst for me to push forwards. And the fact that I was validated by the external assessors really helped.

And I had a job the day after I took my show down. I was working with Al McDowell at Rocking Russian. He had set up Rocking Russian, which was a record sleeve design agency with money from the band that was an offshoot of the Sex Pistols.

Debbie Millman:
With Glen Matlock, right?

Neville Brody:
Exactly. That was a great learning, going straight from failing my course at art school straight into a job. And I think I was one of the only people that had done that. What I’d realized is that the third year thesis isn’t about learning, it’s about interviewing everyone you want to get a job with.

So I did my third year thesis on editorial design and went round and interviewed every agency that was doing interesting, radical magazine design and got offered a job as part of it. So it’s all about using the platforms that you have and being aware of that, and not listening to your tutors. Sorry, Debbie.

Debbie Millman:
No, not at all. I actually want to talk a little bit about design education in a bit, and especially with your experience at the Royal College. But I do want to ask, was your job at Rocking Russian the job you were fired from because you weren’t apologetic enough for being late every day?

Neville Brody:
No, no.

Debbie Millman:
Or was that a different job?

Neville Brody:
So my job at Rocking Russian, I was there for about eight months or just short of a year. Ironically, Rocking Russian turned out to be the people that designed i-D magazine. So if I’d stayed, I’d have been working on i-D and not The Face. The Face magazine was literally 50 yards round the corner. So it was a very concentrated Soho at that time. There was punk clubs, 100 Club, there was punk stores and there were these record labels and startup magazines, but they weren’t run very well on a business perspective.
And I remember at one point it was all hand to mouth and I hadn’t been paid for eight weeks. And it didn’t look like I was going to be paid for a lot longer and realized I had to get a job where I could survive. So I applied for a job at Stiff Records, which was then a crossover from early ’70s rock through to punk, and got a job there for one year and was constantly late, even though I was getting all my work done every single day, and there was no problem with the work. But I got fired for not apologizing for being late.

Debbie Millman:
I love that story.

Neville Brody:
They didn’t care what time I turned up as long as I apologized.

Debbie Millman:
How did you first get the job at The Face?

Neville Brody:
Well, I had come across Nick Logan, who was the publisher and initial editor of The Face when he was working on a magazine called Smash Hits. Smash Hits was an incredibly popular magazine here that printed all the lyrics of all the songs, plus did interviews. And it was incredibly ironic, but not to the people that bought it. They thought they were buying into this pop culture, but it was actually very tongue in cheek. It had journalists like, I believe the Pet Shop Boys were working on it. And so there was a lot of interesting people working on it.

And before that, Nick had been working on New Musical Express, NME, which was the main rock and pop music newspaper that everyone would read on a weekly basis. So he was quite pioneering. And I went to see him to see if I could get a job working on Smash Hits. And he said, “Well, I think your work’s great, but it’s absolutely unemployable in terms of Smash Hits, but I’ll keep it in mind.”

So when Nick left Smash Hits, he then started up with about $5,000 of savings that he’d put away and launched The Face magazine. And I kept in touch with him and about a year in, he invited me in to try a sample layout, which I did, which was a Kraftwerk spread that I’d made very constructivist.

And he looked at it and said, “Ah, you can do something I can’t do. Do you want to be art director?” I said, “Sure,” not knowing what I was doing, never having been involved in magazine design before, actually hating typography at that point. So it was an interesting challenge.

Debbie Millman:
Yes, we need to talk about that. I’ll get to it in a minute because I have a whole series of questions about you hating typography back then. But at the time, The Face was a magazine that was run more or less democratically and “for yourselves above all,” in quotes. There was little external expectation of what sells, and as a result, you became interested in the idea that people don’t actually read words anymore, so much as recognize them. How did that influence your design work?

Neville Brody:
It was a kind of liberation. My whole thesis had been really to try and understand why things exist in our design environments. And my questioning boiled down to two key questions. One was, is it functional? Meaning do we need it in order to perform our actions in terms of reading or recognizing? And is it there for reasons of taste and tradition?

So what we did is we kept the practical side, for instance, you need to be able to know where an article starts, but the traditional thing would be it’s a drop cap or it’s a large word, or it’s a bold type. So that bit then, we said, “We need to know where we begin something, but it could be anything. It could be a road sign. It could be a hole in the paper. It could be a small image. It could be something running upwards.”
So we split the taste and the aesthetics away from the function, and it allowed us to build a completely new aesthetic on top of it. And that extended to the headlines as well, because the headlines then became part of what we call wayfinding signage. And we started to look at each page as a poster and understood that it was all about drawing the eye into different levels of meaning.

And at the very top level, we were able to then link into the last hundred years of graphic design really, and use that as our source of inspiration and then push it on, how could we experiment even further?

How could we collapse letter forms to the point where is it still legible or not?

So each month it became an experimentation. It was like publishing from a laboratory where experimental trials had been going on. Oh, okay, we’ve got to go to print now, so we were pushing that out, and then moving on again to the next set of experimentations.

Debbie Millman:
Did you have a sense at that time how radical your design was?

Neville Brody:
Not particularly. There were some other great magazines around at that time, a year into The Face is when i-D magazine launched. As I said, that was designed by Al McDowell and Terry Jones. We’d also had our experience of fanzines up to that point. So underground there was a lot of photocopied magazines that were going around. And then there was Malcolm Garrett and his very underrated New Sounds New Styles magazine where he was doing a huge amount of experimentation with typography.
So there was a kind of … especially in the middle of Soho. It was part of a culture, and The Face is one of the ones that broke out of that space. So I wasn’t consciously thinking, “I must make this radical.” What I was thinking is, “Here’s a platform and an opportunity to just experiment with editorial design and presentation and storytelling.” How do you take a reader on a journey in a different way? How do you look at juxtaposition of images in a different way? How do you work with photographers in a different way? How do you think of typography in a different way?

And when you talk about democratization, that also means that as designers, we actually had the ability to do the typeface designs ourselves or use Letraset or photocopy down type that we found and amended. So this was a golden age of handmade typography.

Debbie Millman:
Despite the enthusiastic, and that’s probably an understatement, response to the work that you were doing at the time, you felt that your work for the design of The Face was one of your biggest failures. Do you really still think that all these years later?

Neville Brody:
I think that the specific examples of experimentation we were doing in the first, say, four years of working on The Face was so exciting and challenging, really hard work, risking failure as well as something actually working. But with The Face, we had the opportunity to put it out there and see what would happen.

But what happened that we were so unprepared for was that advertising and other magazines would start copying what we were doing. Instead of recognizing what we were doing as something that was experimental and exploratory and unfixed trying to reveal new possibilities, they took this as style, and if they wanted to communicate to the same people who were reading The Face, they needed to copy the style of The Face.

But we never intended that to be a stylistic statement. Some of the content of The Face was talking about style, but it was also talking about reportage. It also had a lot of political opinion in there. And it did have fashion, it did have architecture, it did have design, it did have painting. It did have a lot of music. Actually, it was fundamentally a music magazine more than anything.

But people took the presentation of that to be a stylistic statement. So Wire, the band Wire, their first single was called 1 2 X U, and it was less than two minutes, and they said that they would never make a song more than two minutes at that time because they said, “Once we’ve stated something, we don’t see the point in repeating it. Once an idea is done, it’s done.” And The Face was very much like that. So each issue would take some of the unexplored ideas from the issue before and try and push it a bit further on the next issue, but it was never intended to be a toolbox for anyone.

So the failure was that we didn’t really anticipate the fact that people would take our experimentation and turn it into a stylistic opportunity and a language. In art, it’s called mannerism, where you just take the style of something and just repeat the style without understanding why and how it’s been created.

Debbie Millman:
So it became normalized in a way?

Neville Brody:
Not only normalized, there was a pressure for us to suddenly be inventive every issue. And if one issue we were exploring things which were less spectacular, eventually we were being criticized for this. People would say, “Oh, the new issue of The Face isn’t as radical as what I was expecting,” as if that was a form of failure.

Debbie Millman:
Ah. So it’s radical as performance as opposed to radical as exploration or investigation?

Neville Brody:
Yeah. People had turned it into a kind of fashion statement and change itself became a style, ironically. Then I moved on to doing Arena magazine, and in doing Arena, I took absolutely the opposite position, which was to create a template, a style template, a style guide, and everything would stick to that and it wouldn’t change from issue to issue. Unfortunately, I failed in that because after a while I got bored and started reinventing from issue to issue of course, as we would.

Debbie Millman:
I was going to say that didn’t last long, although I’ve read that you said that your work on Arena Homme, Men, was some of your favorite work of your career. How was that different in your mind?

Neville Brody:
The original Arena magazine, we reduced everything to have Helvetica and Garamond plus a couple of hand-drawn fonts, which we were still assembling by hand for headlines and section headers. But we wanted something that was stable. After the craziness of expectation on The Face, this was like finding a park bench to just sit down and feel stylish. That was a deliberately style-focused magazine with reportage.

And after a while I thought, “Well, hang on a minute, Helvetica is so boring. And we thought, “Well, how can we start to make Helvetica emotive and emotional?” So then we started treating headlines more as visual poetry and seeing how Helvetica could lock up and create new shapes and new meanings by how the words had been connected or scaled. That was one of my favorite periods actually doing that, some of those headlines.

And when I came to do Arena Homme + again, which was actually in 2010, a good 25 years or 24 years later, it allowed me to start from scratch, but using digital tools. We could actually create the typefaces digitally and then play with them on screen, sometimes print them out, cut them up, try again, and mixing that physical handcrafted thing with the digital.

Think about how space is used in magazines, using white space as an emotive force. Impact, rhythm, taking people on cinematic journeys. Again, juxtaposition of images. So all of that stuff was a joy for me.

Debbie Millman:
In addition to the many magazines that you’ve worked on, City Limits, Lei, Per Lui, Actuel, Arena, The Face, you’ve also worked on a number of newspapers. You redesigned many of the sections of The Observer, the website for The Guardian, the complete redesign of The Times. You’ve also worked with the BBC on their website. How do you regard those efforts and is there a difference when you can’t experiment with the form as much as you can with a magazine?

Neville Brody:
So the difference between those freeform, unbounded design approaches on magazines with something that’s far more staid, conventional mass public like a newspaper, is that the magazines that we did had a loose structure in terms of form and grid, but allowed a lot more freedom in terms of expression and the varied voice, whereas a newspaper is every day. So what you need to do is build in some theater, props basically.

So we said to The Times newspaper, every day you’re going out and it’s a new piece of theater, and you have to perform this drama of explanation and conversation and journalism, and what you need is a box of props and different set designs in order to express that difference.

So you roll your sleeves up and you go out and you put a story together, and you don’t know exactly how that story needs to fit together. So we’re going to give you a whole set of components and elements, and we’re going to give you a really clear structure of where they should sit. But then within that, you’re free to be able to scale or use elements as you choose.

So it wasn’t like everything in its place and a place for everything, which was a Victorianism in England. And in a way, at the time, The Guardian newspaper had a lot more of that. It was quite fixed in terms of what you could do, almost as a pre run of our digital spaces now, where it’s content management systems, you can change the words, you can change the image, but it’s still fundamentally the same layout for each story.

Whereas with The Times, we wanted to give them a lot more freedom and scope. So we really focused on differentiation between types of content, articulation of different types of content, and a really, really clear signage and wayfinding system. Once they had that as the base and they knew that they could rely on that, everything else became then much more drama-based in terms of how you told stories.

Debbie Millman:
How much is experimentation still a criteria for you and your work?

Neville Brody:
I think experimentation is vital for everyone. I’ve actually just had a conversation with my design team here and how things have shifted a bit that in the times when I was developing as a designer, experimentation was absolutely critical for me. I would frequently work 16, 20 hours a day of which only a certain amount of hours was about getting client work done. The rest was experimenting and exploring and trying things that failed.

And I think that’s still so critically important, but our cultures have tended to shift towards a kind of 10:00 to 6:00 or 9:00 to 5:00 approach to design and a lot of younger designers tend to see it as a job more than a creative opportunity to explore new, potentially dangerous creative ideas.

So that shift has been quite considerable, and we’ve seen it for the past couple of generations. What happened in the ’80s was a shift away from culture as something cultural and threatening towards culture as something that you consume. And as soon as it became something that you consume, it became far more financially aligned and its worth was based much more in terms of financial value than creative, cultural or social value.

And so a lot of designers are graduating thinking about, “Okay, I need to get a job. I’m going to be professional. I’m really good at getting a job and selling myself,” often more than their capability. So selling yourself, presenting yourself has become, I think a far more significant thing than going away and risking not getting a job by experimentation.

Debbie Millman:
Do you see that impacting the overall quality of not only the state of design, but also the possibilities for design?

Neville Brody:
I think design has changed, and I’m not necessarily critical of that standpoint that younger designers are taking. I think design as an industry has changed. I think designers for its role in society has changed. We don’t have those kind of underground punk movements now. Governments have been really good at keeping activism down, suppressing protest, almost criminalizing protest.

So we don’t have those sort of platforms out there anymore, and the kind of media that we use, increasingly things like social media or digital spaces or mobile-centric media, tend to be so engineering based that there isn’t much room for experimentation except in the content you develop to put on those platforms.

So the layout and the context for where the content sits is much more rigid and regimented and doesn’t allow that sort of freedom we had with layout that we used to have in magazine design or poster design or record cover design. So the majority of people now are engaging with content via social media and via mobile, and there’s no thinking about the environment in which that’s being presented. What people want is just the simplest possible environment that is actually seamless with the machine that you’re looking at it on.

So it’s become highly mechanized, highly engineering focused, and I’m just wondering if there are possibilities out there still where we can be much more experimental with the layout. And of course, you can’t deliver 2 million global pieces of content in a minute by experimenting with layout, that’s never going to happen. Is there somewhere within our space, is it fashion brands or media brands? How do we think about that digital space as something that has the potential to be experimented with?

Debbie Millman:
It seems as if Instagram and Facebook and Twitter or X as it’s now being called, are highly, highly restricted in terms of the way in which you can share “content,” content in quotes, a word I loathe almost as much as assets. You’ve said that they feel like hospitals or airports. Do you see a way in which that can be overtaken? Is there a way to begin to experiment in those environments?

Neville Brody:
I think those environments, probably not. I think that we are restricted to what we can put in those small windows. We can change the curtains or we can put on a bright shirt or we can do a funny dance, but those windows are highly restricted and our behaviors are highly restricted as well. The swipe means that things have changed in terms of a temporal or time basis. We spend less time engaging with content. Excuse the C word there, but-

Debbie Millman:
The C word. Absolutely.

Neville Brody:
Exactly. So we swipe, we’re looking to reward the reward centers in our brains. We’re looking for content that’ll grab us, but not for too long because then we want to move on to the next reward. So it’s all about reward.
I heard an amazing quote the other day, and I can’t remember where it’s from, but it was quoted in The Guardian where they said that technology companies now trade in attraction. So what creates the attraction is a secondary concern, but the framework for creating that bait as it were, has to be fairly reliable and not interesting in itself. And then it’s all about how much content can you deliver, how quickly can you do it? And so how many people can you attract?

I’m not being critical in terms of saying yes, airport or hospital, I’m just likening it to that kind of sense of efficiency more than anything else. Instagram is not a sad place and it’s not a threatening place. An airport is a bit more interesting because actually these are gateways to places, but I wonder how many of these windows actually take you to other places now, whereas we used to get lost on the internet. I don’t know if you remember, Debbie, but we would click a link and then we’d go to another link and then we’d get lost in this-

Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah. The wormholes.

Neville Brody:
… the wormholes and we’d be gone. It’s less easy to do that now because things are being clustered and these are kind of closed spaces quite often now. So our experience has changed completely in that sense.
What I’m saying is that there may be other spaces that we can start thinking about this idea that historically graphic design is friction and we need this friction, whereas most of our modern communication spaces are based on graphic engineering, which creates seamless journeys highlighted by some billboards.

Debbie Millman:
I read a really fascinating interview with you from 1992, which gave great insight into your early vision for graphic design, and one of the things that you talked about was typefaces and how everyone in the future would have their own. And it seems to me you were predicting the notion of a visual selfie in many ways. I’m wondering if that might be an antidote to the sort of highly engineered spaces that you’re talking about.

Neville Brody:
I think I was talking about this the other day actually when I was in New York and met with Dave Crossland, who’s the director of Google Fonts, and we were talking about what happens in the future and how does AI get included and incorporated.

And we’re talking about maybe one day we’ll have our personal AIs that’ll just produce our own typefaces that will be responsive to the mood we’re in when we’re creating content or talking, or even that the message itself will change typeface depending on the mood of the viewer. So AI probably will lead to the ultimate in customization as well as the ultimate in control.

Debbie Millman:
Why did you hate typography while you were in school?

Neville Brody:
I hated typography at school because it was being taught as something that had very, very strict rules, that it was an elite profession that you had to study for years and years on how to cut metal type by hand, that it wasn’t democratic, that you couldn’t change the rules and explore different forms of communication. Therefore, it wasn’t possible to make it contemporary at any point.

So it was always dragging down our need for expression to something that was more archaic and traditional, and I hated that. So I thought at that time, well, if I’m going to be working in communication and I went into record covers, I was an image maker, so I would make images for the front and I would treat type as image. So for me, the type became something more iconic and the words became more iconic and they became part of the image communication.

This then really informed how I eventually moved back to working with typography. As we talked about with The Face magazine, I was still approaching it from the point of view of type as image, and then looking at the layout as image construction itself.

Debbie Millman:
Do you still feel that typography is a hidden tool of manipulation within society?

Neville Brody:
Typography is inevitably a manipulative form because the choice of typeface inevitably changes your response to any message. We seem to be going through a standardization right now where everything becomes Helvetica or even more extreme, everything becomes Arial, and this is because of the ubiquity and the need to reach everyone with every message means that you can’t risk something going wrong. So it uses the lowest common denominator in terms of typography, which is Arial.

So I think that there’s going to be less and less experimentation going on on that kind of level, but still the design of a typeface will completely influence how you respond to what’s being written in that typeface.

Debbie Millman:
Recently, Johnson & Johnson redesigned their long used script logo for a sans serifs somewhat generic looking identity. One of the reasons I read that this change occurred was that younger people don’t use or can’t read script any longer. What do you think of that redesign?

Neville Brody:
Honestly, I think I’m almost embarrassed to agree with everyone on this. I’ve seen a lot of posts about this. It seems like a little bit of an easy target right now. So many other brands have done the same thing.
So the people that have commissioned that have made, I think a gross error because people don’t read Johnson & Johnson, they recognize Johnson & Johnson. It’s the same as the Coca-Cola script. You’ll know what it is without having to read it. The brain connects it straight away. So I think that there’s been a major mistake there.

Burberry went from quite a complex logo to a Helvetica-ish logo and has since created another version now, which has a lot more personality built in. Because if you always try and use the lowest common denominator as the thing that’s driving your aesthetic decisions, you will only ever be as present as the lowest common denominator. So I think all brands should redesign themselves in Arial.

Debbie Millman:
Do you think that changing a logo has the same impact or relevance it once did?

Neville Brody:
I think logos are secondary anyway these days.

Debbie Millman:
Secondary to what?

Neville Brody:
Secondary to the C word. The asset, which you’re talking about, one of which might be the logo, really are buried further down in the mix. The current idea of a brand, historically, it used to be a triangle with the logo at the apex, and now it’s a reverse.

So the content is your shop window now, and somewhere deep down there’s a logo that validates that content. But you’re not buying a brand logo anymore, maybe in street wear or some other specific cases, but fundamentally, you’re buying a brand narrative. And that brand narrative is almost inevitably going to be using the most commonly available tools that it can use.

So it’s a fully understandable situation as a response to the way people consume communication and content, but I do feel the loss of diversity in graphic form. It’s the same as we’re doing to the world in natural form, globally in language and cultural form, and in our industry in terms of brand complexity.

Debbie Millman:
Let’s talk about your new book, it’ll cheer me up. The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3.

Neville Brody:
Oh, no, no, I’m super happy. I’m just going to cut across this, Debbie. No, I’m super happy. I mean, these are all challenges, but we do need to be constantly aware of some things that are going on in order to think about ways that we can mitigate them and bring creative, experimental-

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I’m like, how can we experiment with these platforms that we all seem to be kind of obligated to be on now or confront the possibility that we’ll no longer be relevant if we’re not on them? So we’re kind of forced to participate on some level for our businesses or for our awareness, but most of the time it feels icky.

And you mentioned before something about Instagram being happy. I mean, I don’t know anybody that comes away from scrolling on Instagram for a half hour and feels good about themselves, so I’ll push back on that one. But how can we participate in these frameworks in a way that doesn’t feel so performative?

Neville Brody:
Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. It’s what I talk about, the shift to instance from substance. And where do you get substance now? It’s a very granular thing that’s been happening. So the platforms have to be as personality-free as possible, otherwise they become stronger than this granular content.
So then the question is, where can we find those spaces to really be exuberant and joyful and experimental and adventurous? It might be in books. So my new book, which took six years to put together, is something where I feel that I’ve really been able to push the limits of what a book design can do at this point.

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely.

Neville Brody:
I’ve deliberately blurred the boundary between what is content in terms of images and what is content in terms of layout.

Debbie Millman:
What made you decide 30 years after the publication of The Graphic Language Of Neville Brody 2, that the time was right for 3?

Neville Brody:
When book 2 came out, it was at a really, really interesting juncture. We’d only been working with the Mac, certainly in my studio for say, five years at the point where we started putting the book together. And the previous book was 100% non-digital. It was all manual. All the fonts were hand drawn, everything was physical layout, and that came out in 1988. But from 1988, we shifted completely then to Mac digital production.

So in 1994, it was the first opportunity to really look back on that and look at the changes, look at the opportunities that had given us. FUSE had been launched in that time We’d published-

Debbie Millman:
And FUSE was your conference/publication.

Neville Brody:
Exactly. And it was a laboratory for experimenting with typography because typography had become democratized and less elite. So it was such an exciting time that five years. And looking back on it, a lot of the stuff that was done in graphic design at that time was actually far more radical and experimental than nearly everything that’s going on now. And that five years, I think was a really critical juncture.
FontShop had been launched as the first mass independent typeface retail space. Magazines were becoming independent because you could produce a magazine more easily. Digital printing was coming into the space. We still didn’t know at that point that the computers would be places to receive communication as well as to create communication. So this was sort of before the internet had taken over. This is way before social media, although-

Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah. It was before email, really.

Neville Brody:
Well, yeah, it was sort of around the same time because-

Debbie Millman:
Same time, yeah, ’94-ish.

Neville Brody:
… Netscape was there, Mozilla, and people would be putting pictures of their cats and back gardens and mums and announcing their birthdays.

Debbie Millman:
Well, we’re still doing that on Facebook and Instagram.

Neville Brody:
We’re still doing it, but we had more freedom in 1994 than we do now. And then we had Myspace, which was the end of personal expression in terms of layout. And we’re seeing some of that Myspace aesthetic and ethic coming into TikTok, people decorating videos and putting their own fonts. And so in a way, TikTok is the new Myspace in that sense, and bring it on. I think it’s sort of a joyful explosion.
But then 30 years later, deciding to publish this new volume, there’s a couple of reasons. I mean, I’d always wanted to do it. I felt like the story wasn’t complete. So A, never had the time, B, felt I didn’t have enough work to do a third volume, and three, we really were not clear on what the narrative was in graphic design.

This is a moment where it became quite valid to look back, when I started the book, over that 25 years. It was then, but 6 years later, it’s now 31 years or 30 years. And what’s changed in that time is, as I said before, a shift from graphic design to graphic engineering plus graphic art. So we’re sort of looping to what was at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century before graphic design really launched, and it was very technology driven.

All our big cultural changes have been technology driven from the advent of halftone printing, which happened around the end of the 19th century, color printing, and then through moving image, film, sound recording, all of these things created incredible explosions of creativity. And then coming all the way up to the Mac, then that was a new explosion, hence book 2.

And then now we’re in this new phase of engineered environments and leading into AI. So it was important to go and put a flag in the sand and say, “Well, where are we right now? How have we got here? What possibilities are there? What can we take forwards?” So in a way, it’s an attempt to start to try and understand some of that, like the history, the present, and the possibility.

Debbie Millman:
In the book, you state that in your practice now, you’ve wanted to communicate to as many people as possible, but to also make a popular form of art that was more personal and less manipulative, and I’m wondering if that’s possible. How do you make something more personal and less manipulative?

Neville Brody:
I think by making it more ambiguous and more open, and a lot of my work is exploring the edge between something concrete and solid and something that has collapsed or is unclear or unstructured. So I’m always looking for that line between chaos and order because I think that’s the line where things happen. That’s the border zone. And those are constantly shifting, so our design practice has to constantly shift.

And at the moment, the engineering space is so large that we’re crying out for this other stuff that can actually question it and challenge it. So finding out where that edge is still where my practice sits. And for me, it’s a conversation rather than something with an intent.

Debbie Millman:
I’m surprised to hear that for some time after book 2, that you didn’t feel like you had enough work for another monograph, because it feels like book 3 at 300 pages or so, is actually still leaving out quite a bit of the work that you did in that 30 years. And it’s really a full book. It is overflowing in the best possible way. What do you mean by enough work?

Neville Brody:
I think it was more, I couldn’t find enough reason to publish. Certainly there’s a lot of work, but what was the criteria for assembling it? What was the criteria for the clustering and the journey and the textual thinking behind it? And it would’ve just been a book of work, and that for me wasn’t at all interesting.

Debbie Millman:
So what was the criteria? Talk about that, the narrative arc of the book, because I think it’s such an interesting way of presenting your work. The narrative arc is as interesting as the work.

Neville Brody:
Well, my work has always been presented, or sorry, created as something that people could use to open up questions. I was never going to say, “This is what it should be.” I was always, “Let’s think about what is, and let’s think about what could be.” So I was always trying to use my work as maybe a catalyst for conversation.

And certainly the arc of the book starts with a historical piece from Adrian Shaughnessy following a really interesting viewpoint from Steven Heller. And then the book launches with something that’s quite abstract, which is the piece on speak that immediately follows the introduction.

And then from there, it’s straight into editorial design. And editorial design, for me, is a key point around how we can make our environments more expressive, and how can we tell stories that extend outside of the boxes and the frames. And then from that into FUSE, which is very much thinking about the languages we use as being embodiments of possible thinking and experimentation and other ways of thinking, and so on.

The next chapter is around typographism, which is the name we’ve come up with to explain what these experimental, super graphic pieces of work throughout history can be bought under. And some of those possibilities there, they’re like visual poetry or jazz for me. And it really does start posing this new question of what could graphic art be?

And then through various other spaces, typography, political design, commercial design, trying to explore all the different facets of what it might be to be a graphic designer. And it’s not as simple as it was when I was at art school. There’s a lot of very different possibilities out there right now. And in a way, the book itself is a cry for exuberance and failure and experimentation and embracing the accident and seeing where that leads.

Debbie Millman:
I think that one of the best descriptions that I’ve read of the book is you saying that you approach the design as something poetic and unfixed, blurring the lines between fixed space and abstract fluidity, and I think that’s exactly what it does. And I think that’s why it is so exuberant and optimistic in a lot of ways, despite the notion that design has become more engineering. I think you’ve been able to share the potential that design still has.

Neville Brody:
Well, I did a talk at AIGA last week, week before, which I know you were very present at, Debbie.

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Neville Brody:
And my lecture was focused on the idea of, what can we embrace? What can we touch or incorporate or hug in order to bring back the sense of exuberance and possibility and joyful experimentation? Where can we spark new life in our industry?

It’s very easy to become the equivalent of insurance brokers in design or electricians or plumbers. I’m not denigrating those jobs, but a graphic designer was always there to bring imagination to systems. So where could we start bringing that imagination back?

Debbie Millman:
One thing that I noticed on your website, which both surprised and excited me was your reference to being a brand strategist now. I’m wondering, have you always considered yourself a brand strategist or is that something new?

Neville Brody:
I’ve always considered myself a brand strategist. Right from the beginning, actually, when I was seven or eight years old, I would play at home. This is after I actually learned to walk finally. So I was walking. I could use a pencil, and I-

Debbie Millman:
Had the whole world in front of you.

Neville Brody:
Everything was possible then. And I actually, without knowing what I was doing, I was creating brands at home. I was making paper lorries and transport trucks and buildings, and I was writing a brand name on them. So somehow branding was so deeply embedded in me and it connected for some reason.
And I think I’ve always been thinking about that, that a brand is a piece of storytelling, that it gets expressed as a visual symbol or nowadays, in terms of a set of components. So what is the DNA of a brand? That DNA now is the typeface. It’s the color system you use. It’s your tone of voice. It’s the way you scale or use your language visually and orally. So branding has shifted back from being a logo to all the other elements you use in order to tell your stories.

And we start at the other end, of course. So I’ve always been interested in starting off with a lot of research. You have to research. And then you have to stress test that, and then you have to look at the ambition and then bring those two together. And out of that comes your strategic thinking.
We used to be much more focused on the expression, which was at the far end as the last thing you did. But now our center of gravity has moved much further back on that chain of delivery where we’re thinking much more about strategy, system and component. And the expression then comes, well, how does that all come together?

Debbie Millman:
We’re living at a time where street brands are aspiring to become luxury brands, and luxury brands are aspiring to become street brands. And I’m wondering how that impacted the work you did for the brand Supreme. That’s some of my favorite of your recent work.

Neville Brody:
Well, Supreme came to us who’d always been fans of The Face magazine. But what they took from The Face magazine was quite interesting. They took the political undertones of The Face that it was a call to action, it was a call to rebellion. So what they took was that kind of ’80s statement of express yourself, be different, riot through how you present yourself to the world. And then they wanted somehow to link that to the underground sense of The Face magazine, but in a very modern way. So it was kind of reenacting that in a modern world.

And street wear is quite interesting. Yes, you’re right, it wants to be luxury, and luxury wants to be street wear. And it’s interesting, my son is launching his own street wear brand and he doesn’t want to be luxury. He wants to bring it back to the idea of personal expression, experimentation. And yeah, he’s doing his first pop-up shop next month. So I’m a proud father. And he won’t let me design any of it.

Debbie Millman:
That was what I was going to say, who designed his logo?

Neville Brody:
Nope, he won’t let me near it.

Debbie Millman:
What is the name of the brand? Can you tell us?

Neville Brody:
It’s called Resha.

Debbie Millman:
Can you spell that?

Neville Brody:
R-E-S-H-A. But this is, I mean, obviously a bit premature. He’s still setting all this stuff up, but-

Debbie Millman:
Of course, of course. But it’ll be very, very interesting to see. Neville, I can’t let you leave without asking you about something that I learned for the first time reading your new book. I didn’t know before it was revealed in Adrian Shaughnessy’s essay that in 2003 you were flown first class to meet with Steve Jobs, who was considering you for the position of Apple’s first ever global executive creative director. And it goes on to describe how when you first met with Steve, he asked you if you had any work to show him. So I’m wondering if you can talk about what that experience was like and then what happened after?

Neville Brody:
Well, I was obviously incredibly honored to be flown out. This was all very short notice, getting on a plane, landing in San Francisco, being at Apple’s office the next morning. I’d met Jony Ive a number of times before, but had never met Steve Jobs. And then was ushered into a small room with one table, and then Steve Jobs walks in.

I was like, “Hello, Steve.” And he sat down, he said, “Have you bought any work to show me?” And I said, well, you’ve flown me out here first class from London, and you haven’t seen any of my work. And he said, “No.” So I said, “Well, I happen to have a book of work with me,” which was my second book.
I gave it to him to look at, and he spent 5 to 10 minutes looking through it and then leaned up and leaned into my space and said, “This is just so much design masturbation, isn’t it?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, Apple would never have used any of this.” And I said, “Well, thank God you haven’t paid for any of this.” And we got on then like a house on fire.

We had a great conversation for an hour where we talked about having children, because he offered me the job and I said, “Well, I can only come out two weeks a month because my child is in London.” Then we had a conversation where he said to me something amazing, which was, he said, “Having a child is like discovering the color blue.”

And that’s stayed. It’s such a magical thought. We know it’s there, but we’ve never seen the magical qualities of it. So we had a great hour and it seems that he was just testing my resolve. Then they flew me back first class.

Debbie Millman:
And any regrets not taking that job?

Neville Brody:
To be honest, I think at that time, and I did ask Steve Jobs what the role of graphic design was at Apple, and he said, “Well, it’s simply to be very clean and sell the product.” And I thought, “That’s not really my journey right now.” So I think it would’ve been a financial bullet, one, but a creative bullet dodged in terms of where I don’t think I would’ve had book 3 to be honest.

Debbie Millman:
And I think that the world would be missing quite a lot if we didn’t have, not just book 3, but the 30 years of work that is contained in book 3.

Neville Brody:
Thank you, Debbie. You’re very kind.

Debbie Millman:
Neville Brody, thank you so much for making so much work that matters to so many, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Neville Brody:
Thank you, Debbie.

Debbie Millman:
Neville Brody’s new book is titled The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3 with text by Adrian Shaughnessy. You can read lots more about Neville at brody-associates.com.
This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we could make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Neville Brody appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Coming soon.

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He’s a digital prophet. A graphic designer. A type designer. A punk. An educator. A born raconteur.

The legendary Neville Brody has long been many things at once. And now, following last week’s Paula Scher quote cache, we explore his words, which collectively form a mosaic of his brilliant mind.

—Zachary Petit, Design Matters Media Editor-in-Chief

//

I’ve always been trying to challenge, rethink, or disrupt through graphic design. I’ve never wanted to find a comfortable place in all of this. (source)

//

I tend to be fairly opinionated. In England designers are supposed to be seen and not heard. (source)

//

[I was] morally against the manipulativeness of advertising, so I went into design partly to understand how the form worked, and to use it against itself. I wanted to manipulate people too, but into querying, into questioning what they were being told. (source)

//

Most of my college work was very intense. I was working 20-hour days, seven days a week, on the college work. I just figured if you want to challenge something, you have to do it better than the work that you’re challenging, otherwise people take it as a gesture. (source)

//

That was the great liberation: that you didn’t have to accept things the way they were just because they were written down. (source)

//

Design is more than just a few tricks to the eye. It’s a few tricks to the brain.

//

There are two sides to Modernism, one of which I wholly support, which is that modern communications should be humanistic, expressive and benefit the people. The side I don’t adhere to is the fascistic one that dictates and expects everyone to conform. I will do anything to support individual means of expression. (source)

//

I remember my father saying to me at one point that I should go and get a job in an ad agency, and I just thought, if you believe strongly enough in what you do, that will see you through. So I refused, absolutely refused to compromise, which is another message for students: They don’t need to compromise. They may experience a little hardship, but so fucking what? (source)

//

There was a time when design courses were always geared towards creating precious end objects—like a book or a piece of packaging. But what we’ve managed to do now is shift the focus onto the process and thinking—to give the students valuable tools so that the end product is now their mind, their way of thinking. The outcome of what we do is to develop skilled, dangerous minds. I don’t see the point in teaching for any other reason. (source)

//

I went [to the London College of Printing] to learn the basics and to understand exactly how typography is supposed to work, in terms of the rules. It happened at the same time as punk, which was probably the most influential thing to happen to me in London. The punk explosion pushed all of that out the window. (source)

//

All language is personal and that, to me, justifies very personal typefaces. It’s a mistake to think that graphic design should be anonymous or impersonal. (source)

//

The most important thing today for a brand is not the content that it talks about, but how it talks about it. The typeface becomes a critical part of that voice and DNA, with consistency, authenticity and believability becoming paramount requirements. (source)

//

[On the “digital revolution”:] We don’t think of the industrial revolution as the steam revolution. Steam enabled the industrial revolution. Digital is just steam for the 21st century. It allows you to drive engines and forge new models for design and distribution. Steam enabled transport. Digital does the same but in a knowledge space. It’s a creative and a knowledge revolution—almost like a renaissance. (source)

//

I used to think computers were just tools. Because my initial response to the computer was that if a job can be done by hand, then you don’t need a machine to do it. Then I realized that it doesn’t affect the way you think about your work, just the way that you can do it. As a labor-saving device it doesn’t save any time at all. It means you’ve got more time to try out more options, more time to do things you wouldn
’t have been able to do before. So you don’t work any less. You work just as much, if not more. (source)

//

The computer is seen as a physical space, but it’s not. It’s a mental space. And when you’re going in there, you’re going inside your own head. (source)

//

What was recognized 50 years ago as a radical craft, perfectly placed to engineer change in society through conscious intervention, is once again how we are beginning to see graphic design, as we did in the ’70s, ’80s and at some point in the ’90s. This speeding oscillation produces great individuals and ideas at the turning of the circle, and throws them off, often at wild tangents. (source)

//

I realized very early on that you couldn’t just go and break a window. You maybe have to break every other window; you have to be systematic. Breaking one window is an empty gesture and is easily dismissible, but creating a system out of breaking windows becomes much more disturbing to the thing that you are challenging, to society. In the end, I realized that it has to be rebellion coupled with a highly systematic process, so that means that your thinking has to go very deep within whatever thing you’re working on. This means ultimately that you are creating a language all the way down to the core construction, the foundation. That kind of informed like the whole way I thought of college and everything I’ve done since. (source)

//

The main thing is to have personal integrity. It’s what differentiates the good from the bad. (source)

//

I have a child now, which was my second great transformation. It’s transformed my life in so many brilliant ways. Steve Jobs, the head of Apple, I met with him and we were talking about this and he said it brilliantly. He said, “Having a child was like discovering the color blue.” You are consciously aware, and then suddenly it’s like another reality.

//

I’m realizing again how important it is to disobey. I sense the need for radical, unprecious and disruptive design again, and feel myself being drawn anew towards unstructured chance and structured mayhem. (source)

//

Trust yourself. Learn as many skills as possible. Question everything. (source)
 

The post Design Matters Live: Neville Brody appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

In the design world, Paula Scher is indeed a titan of craft, a working legend, a creative guru.

But if there’s one thing the design world does not need, it’s another standard biographical essay about her. (Excellent ones have long abounded.)

What we all might need, though: More of her wisdom. More of her words. For years, I’ve collected (hoarded?) quotes in the course of my daily wanderings into books, magazines and the expanse of the internet. I’ve written before how a great quote is like a poem, or even the occasional slug of fine bourbon—a poultice for the creative soul.

Going a bit deeper, when interviewing subjects and constructing profiles and other articles, there’s a reason journalists save the best material for quotes: It’s a window, a keyhole, to one’s core. A small moment of truth.

Paula Scher is, and has long been, razor-sharp. Brilliant. Blunt. Hilarious. And in this quote parade that follows, aggregated from a medley of talks and interviews over the years, I hope you’ll discover just that.

—Zachary Petit, Design Matters Media Editor-in-Chief

Note: I went through and managed to track down links to the original interviews. They are linked on the last word of every quote.

//

Identities are the beginning of everything. They are how something is recognized and understood. What could be better than that?

//

Mistakes are how new things are discovered. That’s why I don’t think people work together well, because they correct each other’s mistakes. They take away all the good stuff. That’s the problem with trying to achieve perfection: You take out humanity because you take out the error.

//

As a child, I failed at everything but art. First, I was too scrawny; then I was too fat; my hair was never right; and I was never popular. But as the school artist, I was OK: That was the first place where I felt like I actually belonged.

//

In your twenties you’re either kind of a peanut or a wonder kid. It’s not great to be a wonder kid, because you have nowhere to go but down. But mostly you’re starting out not knowing something, and then you begin to grow.

//

My work is play. And I play when I design. I even looked it up in the dictionary, to make sure that I actually do that, and the definition of play, number one, was engaging in a childlike activity or endeavor, and number two was gambling. And I realize I do both when I’m designing.

//

I think your mind is like a giant slot machine. On one side of your brain, you have all the experiences of your life: every influence, everything that ever inspired you, everything that’s ever made you angry, everything you’ve ever thought, just rolling around in there. It’s fodder. On the other side of your brain is where you input a specific brief, and the specific brief has all the constraints and needs of the particular situation. It all sort of rolls around like a slot machine. You want the brief to line up with a perfect piece of fodder. You pull that fodder to make analogies and make points. It may be something that’s stylistic, or may be a pointed reference of some sort, and these things come together and solve the problem. Now, how does the machine work? How do you know it’s going to work? You don’t. That’s why some work is better than others. I remember a book jacket director in the ’80s who said my work for him wasn’t up to my normal level, and I said, “Well, some days I’m just not as talented as other days.”

//

One day, Stanislaw Zagorski told me, “Illustrate with type,” and that was the best design advice I have ever received. Once I started to see type as something with spirit and emotion, I could really manipulate it.

//

I’ve always been what you would call a “pop” designer. I wanted to make things that the public could relate to and understand, while raising expectations about what the “mainstream” can be. My goal is not to be so above my audience that they can’t reach it. If I’m doing a cover for a record, I want to sell the record. I would rather be The Beatles than Philip Glass.

//

The notion of lining things up and making things function, and then later designing a business card or putting typography on a grid, was virtually impossible to achieve and depressing for me. I felt I was cleaning up my room in some kind of ordered system where the goal of life is to be neat.

//

The idea that information has complete accuracy is a mistake. People shouldn’t rely on it, and I know that as a designer. It’s not all the news that’s fit to print; it’s all the news that fits. Everything is edited. Why is a newspaper the same length every day? It’s a decision to include or not include.

//

So much of my work has a New York attitude. It’s something that’s natural to me. It permeates everything I do, to a degree.

//

Graphic design is painting with words—with symbols. Through typography, through manipulating these symbols we see every day to communicate language, it’s almost like speaking without being there.

//

I like to teach because I have to look at students’ work and figure out how they can make it better and it’s still their work—I want them to look at it through another set of eyes. I end up learning more than they do.

//

It’s not that failure is not embarrassing to me. It’s that I don't have a high enough opinion of myself to have to masquerade as a success.

//

There was a very famous suburb on the outskirts of New York, called Levittown, and all the houses were exactly the same and built in the ’50s. Over time the trees grew up, and began hiding the houses. Then people started adding to the houses. People moved in and out and some people put towers on it and other crazy things. And now it’s a terrific neighborhood, because human beings will not stand for that type of regiment. Over time they will rebel. Designers just line the way with their accidents.

//

Creativity is a small defiant act of misbehaving.

//

My goal in life was to do stuff that wasn't made out of Helvetica.

//

iPhones and other forms of digital media were disrupting boredom, because people can occupy themselves all the time. You don’t have any more downtime—you go on your iPhone, look at email, or you’re playing video games. The fact of the matter is, that eats up really good creative time. I realize that when I’m sitting in a taxicab in traffic, or on my way to the airport, or waiting to get on a plane, or trapped in some other boring situation, that’s when I get the best ideas, because I’ve got nothing else interfering with it. … I think I figured out every identity program I’ve ever done in a taxicab. I really do.

//

Something starts out, and it looks weird and you’re made nervous by it because the introduction to anything is weird. Then people start imitating it, then someone perfects it (because the first one is usually odd), then it becomes a style, then it becomes expected, then it becomes hackneyed, then it’s dead. Until it gets resurrected in a different form. This is always the same.

//

Most things that need to be designed are worth doing well, unless they are for harmful products or things that you cannot believe in for personal reasons (politics, etc). You are the one who will be creating America’s visual landscape. Your job is to raise the expectation of what design can be.

//

This is a wonderful profession. Design is important to our society. Designers for the most part are interesting people who have a unique vision. It is important to be part of that community, to support one another, to continually improve the state of design and create a more intelligent and informed public. Never pander, never be cynical and never attack fellow designers.

//

It doesn’t matter how long something takes. All that matters is how the end user perceives the design.

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Success isn’t about the finished piece. I don’t think you’re ever done.

//

My favorite projects are the ones that I haven’t finished yet: I think they will be the best thing I’ve ever done before they get screwed up. There’s always a moment when I think a project is going to be really amazing—that’s the moment I love, and it’s what I live for.
 

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