Barnbrook and his design studio, Barnbrook Design have been producing work since 1990 across lots of areas of design from CD covers, books, posters, web, exhibitions, font design and so on. Barnbrook is well known and credible, I believe for having a strong sense and insight in to the broader implications of the work he understakes. I think this underpins the aesthetics of his work since it seems to be intellectual rather than needlessly stylistic. I would say that this perhaps makes his work appear cold in its appearance but I don’t think that’s what Barnbrook is about. His work is about communicating clearly and certainly in his politically and philosophically loaded images, he is capable of combining commonly accepted metaphor and symbol to express ideas and make statements which would otherwise need essays to explain in words. He has this down to a “fine art” and believes in the validity of his comments. Stylistically I don’t like how his work appears because often the for me, colours and image components don’t hold any emotion despite their weighty content. For me, I would want to see some heart in his work but having said that the messages work and do what they need to. Thank, whoever for Barnbrook, we need more like him.
