Artist of the day: Artist of the day, June 19: Jonathan Barnbrook, British graphic designer, typographer and filmmaker

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Artist of the day, June 19: Jonathan Barnbrook, British graphic designer, typographer and filmmaker

Jonathan Barnbrook (1966) is a popular contemporary British graphic designer, typographer and filmmaker. He was raised in Luton, United Kingdom. He received his formal art education from Saint Martin’s School of Art. Later he attended the Royal College of Art in London from where he graduated with distinction. He has become a multifaceted practitioner of graphic design, typeface design, motion graphics, activism and industrial design. He introduced his typefaces through the California innovator Émigré and his widely known typeface Mason appeared in 2010. The typeface became one of the first digital acquisitions of The Museum of Modern Art. In 2002, he produced the album cover for David Bowie’s album Heathen. In the album he incorporated his ‘Priori’ typeface which he used for the first time for the commercial purpose. Bowie requested him to design cover art for other albums including Reality and The Next Day which hold a rather controversial reputation.

According to Barnbrook, record cover artwork designing is possibly one of the factors that attracted his attention toward graphic design. Besides designing album covers, Barnbrook has created multiple fonts such as False Idol, Exocet, Newspeak, Awe, Infidel, Sarcastic, Shock and Moron. Most of these fonts have emotive and controversial titles, which is indicative of the fact that they clearly reflect style and themes of his work. Additionally, he collaborated with a young British artist, Damien Hirst on a book project. They worked together mainly on layout, design and typography of his strangely titled book I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now. In fact, they also handled the artwork related to the curiously named restaurant, Pharmacy.

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