I went along to the D&AD lecture last night, during which it was stated we would finally decide whether Neville Brody is a wanker or a genius. Everyone was even given Ready Steady Cook style cards with Wanker on one side and Genius on the other to hold up at the end. We were also invited to tweet our questions live to the D&AD Twitter stream, where Adrian Shaughnessy would read them out, very modern.

So what is the problem with Neville Brody then? I admit I didn’t really get it before the lecture as a talented influential designer with a famous body of great work is obviously a genius. Why would you want to call him a wanker? The only people I’d confidently label wankers are Glenn Beck and Robbie Williams. Glenn for his distorted view of the world and insistence on everyone sharing it, Robbie for his ubiquity, arrogance and inexplicable chart success. It turns out Brody has all of these qualities (with the exception of radio airtime).

The theme of the talk came from an infamously virulent blog discussion on the Creative Review website after he was asked to design a cover for Wallpaper magazine:

The idea on the left was chosen, which decodes as reading ‘I hate design’ but it was the unchosen design on the right which really pissed people off, heralding it as final proof that Brody had become so famous and out of touch he had finally disappeared up his own arse.

The lecture was full, very full and Brody was walking around the crowd beforehand chatting to people. He had a ponytail, the sort of thing which you expect to see on a villain’s henchman in a bad 1990s Jean Claude Van Damme movie. I admit it, I was already tending towards ‘wanker’ at that point but I was keen to hear what he had to say and be taken through the work by the man himself.

And that’s where the problems began because the lecture didn’t turn out to be about Brody’s work. Sure, there were some JPGs being projected on the screen behind him but he didn’t tell us much about any of it or give us any real insights into the specifics of the briefs or projects. In fact Brody seemed to regard the whole idea of designing things for a client in a commercial context as smutty, and the prospect of explaining them made him squirm. He was far more keen to talk about politics, design education and changing the world. The excellent Adrian Shaughnessy looked visibly bored. There was a tangible frustration from the audience – who had all come straight from a hard day’s work problem solving for clients or tutors – at Brody’s unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of being a graphic designer in 2009. He would far rather talk about Margaret Thatcher and how he would run design education in Britain if he was in charge. At one point he said:

“If someone’s idea of success is getting shown on a certain website or blog, that’s like being on the noticeboard in a church hall. It’s a church, but not THE church.”

…so what church are we talking about Neville? THE church meaning the widest possible audience is all very well, if you’re Neville Brody you can talk and people listen, but most of us are just looking for an appreciative audience and haven’t managed to become a design celebrity already. Interestingly directly after this quote, he showed us his design for the D&AD annual itself, which surely must qualify as a particularly yellow note in a very specific church hall.

His utterly unrealistic idea for the annual of not allowing anyone to show images, but only printing large URLs to the work online was sure to anger designers who are proud of their work and have had to pay £160 for the book.

And it was that kind of slight hypocrisy coupled with uncompromising personal conviction which helped Brody come across as a bit smug and not overly likable despite the huge amount of admiration for him in the room. I tried to like him, I really did, but in the end I couldn’t warm to him the way it’s usually easy to when you go to a lecture by a design hero.

He did talk about some thought provoking stuff though, and is a fierce champion of the designer and their craft, lamenting the fact that anyone with a Mac and the CS Suite considers themselves a designer.

“You don’t need talent to learn skills”

“We’ve shifted from an appreciation of craft to personality”

He also obviously had some nice work, I particularly liked his typeface for Public Enemies and type treatments for Becks Futures.

He just seemed horribly out of touch with the actual job of being a designer, and happy to ignore how much he himself is defined by his celebrity and ‘trendy typefaces’ whilst criticising it wherever he detected it elsewhere. Brody is one of those designers who cut their teeth on record sleeves and magazine covers, which aren’t really proper ‘design’ problem solving as much as indulgent art with a commercial context. To all intents and purposes, Brody hasn’t been a designer for years, he’s clearly an artist you see:

“I hate the design that’s premeditated and calculated”

That’s what design IS though. Creative endeavour without parameters is art. To be honest I would be far more interested in attending a lecture about the design of Neville Brody, rather than one which ponders the lofty A-Level question of what design actually is, but that’s what we got.

“The shift from discovery to vanity in the name of finance”

He also seemed to find the prospect of the future depressing, which I couldn’t fathom. Any designer or creative person ought to be fired up by the future, excited by it by default, but I guess a man who has already made his name has more to fear from the future than those of us still trying.

A large proportion of the audience were students, and the following question and answer session was pretty pointless, with most questions being from people dissatisfied with their course for one reason or other, or actually simply wanting to ask Neville if he would come in and give them a similar talk in a smaller room for their friends. One guy in the audience was interested in occupational insurance for designers, which is surely a question best answered by the Churchill dog.

At the end of the lecture, the vote was taken, and despite being a pretty close thing, was recorded officially as a vote for Neville’s ‘Genius’ so there you have it, he is definitively a genius. Which of course we all know really.

Perhaps he just gets under some designers’ skin because they envy him, his freedom to do whatever he likes and how unapologetic he is for that, rather than anyone really thinking he is actually a wanker. But of course, as most people have suspected for years, all designers are wankers anyway.

The final word should go to the complete pointlessness of requesting the audience, present or absent, tweet questions to Neville in real time. Adrian Shaughnessy didn’t appear to have ever used Twitter in his life and the D&AD Twitter page was left unrefreshed from 10 minutes before the lecture started to the end. In fact Adrian simply scrolled down the list and when he reached the bottom, he clicked ‘more’ to load further, older tweets. Consequently neither Adrian or Neville actually saw anything that people tweeted during the lecture, which is a shame because I was really hoping he’d answer my “What advice would you give aspiring wankers?” question.