Robert Brownjohn: Sex and Typography

by Emily King
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.

I must have been around fifteen or so when I saw the James Bond film Goldfinger* on TV. I'm not sure if it was the title sequence's voluptuous young, bikini-clad woman painted head to toe in gold that attracted me to the film (it certainly may have been involved in the attraction process for a young teenager) but I have to confess it was probably the projected, moving images gliding over the aforementioned gold flesh that totally captivated me. I had never seen anything like it. It totally blew my mind. I didn't know at the time that a graphic designer was responsible for this (with the help of the gold-painted Margaret Nolan). In fact I didn't even really know what a graphic designer was. All I knew was that I had experienced something that had seriously affected my senses. Little did I know that this sequence of images would continue to impact upon me years later – moreso from a design perspective than a 'male' perspective (I think).

Designer Robert Brownjohn's design decision to project live action over a gold-painted model was, and still is, an outrageous idea. This seductive and quite fantastic moving-image sequence is perhaps Brownjohn's best known design project. He was a strikingly creative force in New York in the 50s and later London in the 60s and Emily King's recent monograph of him captures not only all the details of his film title work but is a terrific record of the life and legacy of a prodigious design talent. It's also a great record of the impact and effectiveness of Madison Avenue's 'Big Idea' approach to visual communication of that era.

As has been mentioned on Design Observer, Brownjohn's life makes interesting reading. Truly a larger-than-life character, and one who succumbed to an early death at the age of 44 due to a drug addiction, Brownjohn's career lasted only two decades but he left an indelible impression on the design world and the people around him. Armin Vit on SpeakUp outlines the inseparableness of Brownjohn the person and Brownjohn the designer/art director and how often when, retrospectively, we see the design artefacts produced by a designer, we are often unsure of the exact context of them and how a designer's output really ties in with who they were/are. This is laid quite bare, and often quite frankly so in this monograph – which, incidentally ties in with an exhibition of Brownjohn's work at London's Design Museum. This honesty, candidness and frankness is also one of the great strengths of the book.

Career-wise in brief: Brownjohn studied under László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus émigré, at the Institute of Design in Chicago during the 1940s (whose influence you could say is visible in the images above). He went on to be an eminent art director in New York establishing Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar in 1956 and later departed to London to start afresh (where the drug laws were also more lax than those in the US). London's small-scale design scene was quickly energised by the arrival of Alan Fletcher (a Brit who had been working in the US), Bob Gill and Brownjohn. He later moved into film titles, most notably created were those for the James Bond films From Russia With Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964) and he later started a film company with director Hugh Hudson creating some award-winning TV advertisements. In 1970 he died of a heart attack.

I have to admit that Brownjohn has always been a favourite designer of mine. I never knew that much about him – I actually thought he was British until I read this book. I knew he was 'the Goldfinger guy' and that his work was imbued with a very clever, witty sense of humour. He also utilised a startlingly diverse visual language and he was also certainly not one to shy away from some quite wild experimentation.

And that's one of the biggest lessons that I take away from 'Sex and Typography'; the level of intellectual enquiry coupled to a sense of play is simply extraordinary,** even by today's standards. Designers of today need perhaps to take heed of the notion of 'play' and of experimentation that are such serious ingredients of Brownjohn's work. These crucial components of his design process made his designs function and communicate very effectively 50 to 60 years ago and still make them compelling, engaging and lively today.

The book's cover is highly symbolic too. The 'golden girl' in Goldfinger died from 'paint asphyxiation.'*** By being totally consumed by 'goldness' she perhaps suffered a similar fate to Brownjohn. It could be said that he too died from living a life way too all-consuming. And from being just way too 'golden'.

'Robert Brownjohn: Sex and Typography' is a great book on an extraordinary designer.

 

Notes
* The best and most surreal moment within the opening titles are when (the projected) Bond is on the run, being pursued, and he runs up the thigh of the gold-painted Ms Nolan. Sexy, comic-book, camp and the epitome of 'Bondness'. And, the film contains perhaps the great 'Bond-line': Bond: "Do you expect me to talk?" Goldfinger: "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."

** Amongst many others described in the book, there is the apocryphal tale of Brownjohn pitching the titles idea for 'From Russia with Love' by lifting his shirt, exposing his belly and dancing in front of projected images in a darkened room full of film company executives. "It will be just like this", he exclaimed, "except we'll use a pretty girl" (p204).

*** Can one die from being painted head-to-toe? Supposedly one needs to leave an area of skin unpainted for your skin to 'breathe'. But the jury's out on this one. Even Mythbusters couldn't decide. Read about it here, scroll down to 'asphyxiation argument'.

Also, a great resource of artefacts of 'the big idea' era is Esquire Magazine. Their cover designs (from the 50s and 60s) often epitomise the 'think small' approach of Madison Avenue's school of the 'big idea'. Esquire's online collection of covers is here. Thanks Mark Seggie for the link.

Read more of 'think small' and 'the big idea' in Steven Heller's 'Big Ideas that Built America' in Eye Magazine, Volume 6, Autumn 1996, pp 66-73.