Jonathan Barnbrook was born in 1966. He and his studio have been active since 1990, working across a broad range of disciplines including graphic design, industrial design, typeface design and film. Preffering to keep his studio small in order to work on a wide variety of commercial and self-motivated project Barnbrook Design, based in Soho, London, currentyl consists of Jonathan Abbott, Elle Kawano, Marcus McCallion, and until recently Pedro Inoue.

Barnbrook Studio

The studio divides its time between commercial work on an international basis for museums and cultural institutions and non-commercial projects. One of Barnbrook Design's most visible forms of activity is in the world of typeface design where they have extended a socio-political view to this often quietly traditional world. Producing typefaces based on historical forms but with a very contemporary subversive influence and titled in an appropriately confrontational manner. Typefaces with names such as "Manson" (American serial-killer), Exocet (French missile) and Bastard (English swearword) have garnered both praise and criticism for the highlighting of the relationship of words to the letterforms that represent them.

Non-commercial

Non-commercial collaborations include art directing and producing work with Adbusters the leading activist magazine. The studio also puts great effort into developing and producing work which highlights political and social injustices that are offered for free and without copyright restrictions on the studio's website (www.barnbrook.net, www.virusfonts.com). Recently the studio has increasingly taken part in exhibitions of specially commissioned artworks.

Commercial

Commercial collaborations include major corporate identities for Roppongi Hills, the largest post was development in Tokyo, and Mori Art Museum, a new internationally-based contemporary art museum also located in Tokyo. In Britain, Barnbrook Design had become very well known as a result of collaboration with major figures in the British art scenes such as the Saatchi Gallery and Damien Hirst, for whom he designed his book "I Want To Spend The Rest of My Life, Everywhere with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now" which won a host of top design awards. Barnbrook Design also works in the commercial film world, again winning many awards for their motion graphics work.

Jonathan Barnbrook had a retrospective exhibition "Friendly Fire" in Design Museum in London in summer 2007. In the same year, he published a book Barnbrook Bible, a monography of his studio's work.

Photo of Jonathan Barnbrook by Tomoko Yoneda