graphic design = visual communication creative design = timeless, witty, iconic, unambiguous, simple, stylish, relevant, intelligent, an emphasis on content over form + imagination! Robert Brownjohn 1925 - 1970 Robert Brownjohn Creating titles for early James Bond films and Rolling Stones album sleeves, the graphic designer and art director Robert Brownjohn was responsible for many of the most memorable images of the 1960s. Famed for the simple execution of brilliant graphic ideas, Brownjohn captured the experimental spirit of the era by applying modernist visual theory to mainstream culture. Student: “What is Graphic Design?” Brownjohn: “I am” BIOGRAPHY 1925 Born in Newark, New Jersey as the third child and only son of Herbert Brownjohn, a British-born bus driver, and his wife Anna. 1943 After graduating from the Arts High School in Jersey City he studies at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. 1944 Enrols at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he studies under the Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy, who publishes one of Brownjohn’s student projects in his 1947 book Vision in Motion. 1946 When Moholy-Nagy dies, Serge Chermayeff becomes director of the Institute and appoints Brownjohn as an assistant. 1948 Joins the Chicago Planning Commission as an architectural planner. 1949 Returns to the Institute of Design. Within the US design community, his friends include R. Buckminster Fuller, Marcel Breuer and Mies Van Der Rohe. 1951 Moves to New York, where he works as a graphic designer for the furniture designer George Nelson. 1953 Works briefly at Bob Cato Associates and teaches at Cooper Union and Pratt Institute, while designing freelance for Columbia Records, The American Crafts Museum and Pepsi-Cola. 1956 Marries Donna Walters and their daughter Eliza is born. Designs the American Jazz Annual for the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. His New York circle of friends includes Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and Andy Warhol. 1957 Co-founds Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar with Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, where he continues to design for Columbia Records and Pepsi, while working on corporate identities and exhibition design projects including the US Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. 1960 Leaves New York and Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar to move to London, where he becomes a creative director of the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. 1962 Joins a rival agency McCann-Erickson. Donna leaves Brownjohn by moving to Ibiza with Eliza. 1963 Designs the title sequence for the James Bond film From Russia With Love. Begins a relationship with the fashion designer Kiki Milne. 1964 Creates the titles for the James Bond film Goldfinger. 1965 Works with the film makers David Cammell and Hugh Hudson, with whom he founds Cammell, Hudson and Brownjohn. Begins work on the five year series of ‘Money Talks’ cinema commercials for Midland Bank. 1966 Creates the titles for The Tortoise and the Hare film, directed by Hugh Hudson, for Pirelli tyres. 1968 Designs the artwork for the Rolling Stones’ album Let It Bleed. Plays a cameo role in Dick Clement’s film Otley. 1969 Cammell, Hudson and Brownjohn disbands and he forms Nagata & Brownjohn with the Japanese- American director David Nagata. Plays a cameo part in Dick Fontaine’s film Double Pisces, Scorpio Rising. Designs the Peace? Poster. 1970 Robert Brownjohn dies in London of a heart attack. Bob Gill organises a memorial service at the US Embassy in London. In his short but intense working life, Brownjohn helped to redefine graphic design, to move it from a formal to a conceptual art. His projects exemplify every aspect of his relationship to design, including his emphasis on content over form and his preferences with ordinary and personal images. He always insisted on new ideas, fresh imagery, and the best conceptual solution to the problem at hand. His goal was not to make things pretty but to arrive at a design that would solve a problem both conceptually and formally. Brownjohn believed that if an idea couldn’t be described over the telephone, it wasn’t simple, clear, and direct enough to work. ‘watching words move’ 1962 Words have the power to move. In 1962 a modest design studio created its own riff on that statement in the form of a small booklet of typographic brilliance, and changed forever how designers thought about the graphic potential of words. Decades later, the impact of watching words move is still felt. Never before had the idea been so lucidly and playfully expressed that type itself could speak, that word-forms carried their own implied visual meanings; that the placement of letters on the page could suggest motion, narrative, emotion - just about anything. ‘watching words move’ 1962 ‘watching words move’ 1962 ‘watching words move’ 1962 ‘watching words move’ 1962 ‘watching words move’ 1962 ‘watching words move’ 1962 ‘watching words move’ 1962 ‘in the last 15 years, in typography the real advance has been the use of type not as an adjunct to an illustration or photo, but in its use as the image itself.’ said BJ back in 1963. the belief that words carry emotional as well as intellectual connotations was central to his work approach to advertising typography. These assertations suggest that, far from being a frivolous pastime, the typographic play of ‘watching words move’ was Brownjohn’s bid to make ‘a new statement’. The invitation to ‘watch’ words is deceptively casual. In beckoning us to look rather than read, he was signaling the way towards his vision of modernity. ‘money walks’ late 1960’s ‘money walks’ late 1960’s ‘money walks’ late 1960’s ‘money walks’ late 1960’s ‘irwin studios ltd’ late 1964 ‘sanatogen multivitimans’ early 1960’s ‘yardley lipstick’ 1962 ‘book design’ late 1950’s ‘book design’ late 1950’s ‘magazine cover’ 1961 ‘lifelons stockings’ 1963 ‘lifelons stockings’ 1963 ‘The words and the design came together,’ McCann Erickson’s David Burnstein said, refering to the fact that Brownjohn often wrote his own copy. ‘He was a great synthesizer, that’s better than simplifier... he loved accidents, making accidents, he was a walking accident.’ ‘letterhead for michael cooper’ 1967 ‘james bond - title sequences’ 1963 & 1964 ‘james bond - from russia with love’ 1963 ‘james bond - goldfinger’ 1964 ‘james bond - goldfinger’ 1964 rolling stones - let it bleed 1969 rolling stones - let it bleed 1969 Tony Palladino, a friend of his in London, says about the cover, "You know the Rolling Stones cover, Let it Bleed? With the cake? Put that altogether and destroy it. Fuck it up, you know, fuck it up. I think it shows the anger that he felt at that point in time." bj’s peace poster 1969.