www.chrisbrawndesign.com

Design and Art Direction

As long as art stands aside from the problems of life it will only interest a very few people. Culture today is becoming a mass affair, and the artist must step down from his pedestal and be prepared to make a sign for a butcher’s shop…

The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing. Instead of pictures for the drawing-room, electric gadgets for the kitchen. There should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and hideous things to use. If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or caprice, then we shall have nothing to hide.

Design as Art Bruno Munari 1966

Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder The book charts a course through the other worlds, future visions and altered states of sci-fi film and television. Taking us from the magical invention of early cinema and onwards past the flying saucers, forbidden planets and Martian invaders of 1950s Cold War sci-fi and the adventures in space and time of Doctor Who. We journey deep into the virtual realities of cyberspace, meeting advanced artificial intelligences, biological mutations and alien lifeforms, and on to the special-effects-laden, galaxy-spanning entertainments of today. Through a range of lavishly illustrated new essays ‘Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder’ shows how sci-fi is as much about ideas as spectacle, and how it expresses our sense of fear and wonder like no other genre.

Electric Shadows: A Century of Chinese Cinema An introduction to the long and illustrious history of Chinese cinema, from the earliest silent films through the glamour and invention of Shanghai’s golden age in the 1930s, from the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution to the grand renaissance of the ‘Fifth Generation’ directors in the 1980s, and from the underground, independent spirit of the 1990s to the booming multiplex cinema of the present. Along the way it tells the parallel stories of Hong Kong and Taiwan’s cinema, and, of course, China’s great genre cinema, from ‘wuxia’ swordplay epics and kung fu spectacles to crime thrillers and eerie ghost tales.

Sight&Sound ‘Sight & Sound’ magazine, which was first published in 1932, is the UK’s original magazine for fans of film. Born as a quarterly publication, the journal quickly became a highly influential element of the activities of the British Film Institute (BFI), which came into being in 1933. ‘Sight & Sound’ is critically and historically authoritative, and at the same time wide-ranging and cutting edge. It covers as wide a range of moving-image experiences as possible, looking at films and filmmakers from all over the globe, plus artists’ film/experimenta, film festivals, TV, DVD and Blu-ray, film books, and film history and theory. It has a comprehensive review section combined with in-depth features, along with news, views and interviews with the most important people in filmmaking.

I have been the magazine’s designer since 2001 and its art director since 2005.

Black WorldA 32-page supplement to ‘Sight & Sound’ magazine, and part of the British Film Institute’s major project dedicated to celebrating black creativity in film. With contributions from Melvin Van Peebles, Nelson George, Michael Mann, Charles Burnett and Anthony Minghella.

39 Steps to the Genius of Hitchcock From his humble beginnings as a greengrocer’s son in East London, Alfred Hitchcock rose to become the most celebrated film director the world has ever known. Comprising 39 lavishly illustrated new essays – many written by some of the world’s foremost authorities – ‘39 Steps to the Genius of Hitchcock’ offers a complete portrait of the man the world came to know as the ‘Master of Suspense’.

Chaplin A 16-page supplement to ‘Sight & Sound’ magazine. Sponsored by Warner Bros to mark the re-release of ‘The Chaplin Collection’ on DVD, with text by Chaplin’s acclaimed biographer David Robinson, the supplement introduces ten key Chaplin films, and combines some of the most iconic images of the filmmaker at work with rarely seen archive material.

Open Asia Open Asia was an exhibition by photographer Kris Dewitte and part of The Open Doek Film Festival, which is held annually in Turnhout, Belgium. Focusing on Asian Film, the book features a foreword by Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, four on-set film photography, plus a section of portraits of prominent film actresses.

Contact details e: chris.brawn@bfi.org.ukm: 07957 484731

To view more of my work, visit www.chrisbrawndesign.com

Phaidon Books Phaidon Books is an international publisher of books on art, photography, architecture, design, travel, fashion, food and more. To date, I have completed the layout of three books.

Ingres A 240-page monograph, with 60 colour illustrations and 20 black-and-white illustrations, charting the career of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), one of the most influential painters of the French neoclassical period.

GéricaultA 232-page monograph, with 195 colour illustrations and five black-and-white illustrations, exploring the life and works of painter, draughtsman and lithographer Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), a pioneer of the French Romantic movement.

The Art Museum The finest art collection ever assembled between two covers, this revolutionary and unprecedented virtual art museum in a book, features 992 oversized pages of nearly 2,700 works of art. It is the most comprehensive and visually spectacular history of world art ever published. Ten years in the making, this unique book was created with a global team of specialists in all fields of art, including museum curators and educators, who have collected together important works as they might be displayed in the ideal museum.