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I have this personal project, you know… I call it ‘breaking up Sunday’… On Sundays there is always a strange atmosphere, kinda sleepy, but culminating from inside… because people are becoming aware that the weekend is almost over…

So, I like to ‘break up’ this atmosphere by doing something that would cheer me up. Sunday – one week ago,  was great in that sense, coz I went to see Jonathan Barnbrook’s exhibition Collateral Damage. That was my Prozac for the weekend (and Monday morning)…

Rosama Mcladen by J. Barnbrook (c)

‘Collateral Damage’ is his collection of posters, logos and fonts which focuses on his artworkz in the past 15 years.

Barnbrook’s sensibility to create a sort of dictionary for typography is the thing that particularly turnz me on in his work. His sets of types are created as collections of different vocabularies intended for different social needs.

Among his well known types created under ‘font factory’ Virus Font, such as Regime, Prozac, Sarcastic, Patriot, Prototype, Bastard, Melancholia; he also exhibited Doublethink type. Barnbrook says about Doublethink: ‘Drawn originally in the 1960s in Yugoslavia as a logo for the shopfronts of the state-owned clothes company “Standard Konfekcija” by Vinko Ozic-Pajic from Zagreb. This ‘digital’ looking font was originally constructed by shaping a piece of rope into the letterform shapes to keep the font ‘fluid’.’

Doublethink by J. Barnbrook (c)

‘There are not many that have mourned the passing of Communism, but Virusfonts can’t help feeling that a huge amount of valuable visual culture has been thrown away with everything else. So this is one release of many, that we are planning, to highlight these ‘lost’ fonts.’

Doublethink by J. Barnbrook (c)

With a perfect instinct for social and cultural changes Barnbrook doesn’t ignore the political meaning and the whole set of subculture tools in order to spread the message.

However, at the same time he’s staying in the same track of mainstream public, with an obvious reason, to deliver the meaning even to audience which isn’t so captivated to scenes happening ‘out side of their yard’.

Spot the Difference by J. Barnbrook (c)

The semantics of his ‘Korean cycle’ is a perfect example for Cultural studies students and researchers, not only to designers. As a starting point he took references to Naomi Klein’s No logo, making juxtaposed series with polysemantic meanings and visual riddles for the viewers.

His posters are more readable than they ought to be comprehended as visual objects. They are more created as a bunch of intersected yarns, always in rather disciplined order.

The Little Fellow by J. Barnbrook (c)

Collateral Damage is sharp provoking and based on ‘small boxes’ of life ironies, but what makes it so different is that Barnbrook is an deeper devotee to the idea of changes through different design identities. Of course, identities with attitudes.

p.s.  Adbusters + Jonathan Barnbrook = luv
p.s. 1. Check the Barnbrook Bible here