Jonathan Barnbrook is the judge for the coming ‘Media’ themed Don’t Panic poster competition. He also has an exhibition on at the Design Museum until the 10th of October. Barnbrook is one of the UK's most innovative graphic designers. Pioneering design with a social conscience, Barnbrook makes powerful statements about corporate culture, consumerism, war and international politics.
Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
My name is Jonathan Barnbrook. I am a designer, typographer, artist and involved in the anti-globalisation movement through collaborating with Adbusters.
Please tell us about your exhibition at the Design Museum.
It's called Friendly Fire - the title refers to the fact that much of my design work directly criticises my own profession of design, for being to commercially led, and for not caring more about the role design has in changing society.
It’s a retrospective but that is making it sound a little bit more 'straight' than it is. It mainly features my studio's political work and typefaces. There is a huge wall of all the political graphics combined. The fonts are displayed black on black, so it is not what people would expect from a graphic design exhibition
How has typography evolved in last twenty years and what part in that evolution have you played?
The computer has played a huge role in changing typography. Before the Mac came along, doing typography or drawing letterforms was expensive and often the people who had access to technology were technicians. It all changed at the beginning of the 1990s with the introduction of easy and cheap technology and it exploded as a creative field with lots energy.
From being a dusty, academic field, it reflected what was going on in that moment. I was one of the people who pushed the boundaries at that time and hopefully still produce radical experiments in typography and typeface design.
You have worked with Adbusters in the past. How powerful a tool is design for major corporate advertisers?
Design is a powerful tool in the hands of anybody - corporations, advertisers or anti advertising organisations like Adbusters. That's is why we have to make sure its used properly and designers realise the power they have to put across their opinions, or help others whose causes are valid but are unable to get their point of view into the mainstream.
Do you ever find that your work clashes with your ideology?
We won’t work for anybody that is not compatible with our ideology, so there is never a conflict. The problem with many designers is that they think its ok to separate what they believe personally with what they do in their job, its not.
In your opinion who were the most innovative designers/artists of their generations?
That's such a wide ranging question its almost impossible to answer, but for me, I would always go outside of design for inspiration. I would rather look towards people like Gandhi who talk of universal principles that can be applied to every part of life, including your design philosophy. We are not separate from society and principles of living should apply as much in design as anywhere else, otherwise we become irrelevant.
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