Rian Hughes / Device
London
Batgirl
Logo
DC Comics
Rian Hughes has a restless creativity that refuses to be limited to a single discipline. He has created comic books for DC Comics, dozens of typefaces for his type foundry, Device, and illustrations for clients including Virgin Atlantic, Swatch, and MTV, rendered in a pop-modernist style that has spawned a legion of imitators.
DESIGNER/ILLUSTRATOR/TYPOGRAPHER RIAN HUGHES is among the Moleskine notebook’s many supporters, though he’s quick to point out that getting the idea down is more important than what you do it with. “If my Moleskine isn’t on hand, sticky notes and the proverbial backs of envelopes also serve. My sketchbooks are very much idea diaries and include lots of written material with diagrams, doodles, titles for projects, story ideas, and places and subjects I need to research. These are mostly written in a personal form of shorthand, which I sometimes can’t decipher myself. On rereading, some of it sounds pretty abstract, while other snippets are simple and direct, almost like T-shirt slogans: ‘Label Whores,’ ‘Global Village Idiots,’ ‘How to Kill an Idea,’ ‘The Gaza Strip Gentleman’s Club,’ etc.”
These short phrases hint at Hughes’s wry sense of humor, which finds its way into his illustration work and his typeface design. Both express a delicately maintained balance between nostalgia and futurism; both are rendered with absolute precision yet retain a flowing, organic dynamism and a roving imagination. “I get many of my ideas as I’m dropping off to sleep. The brain is freewheeling then, and can come up some interesting and novel connections.”
DC Comics
Various Logos
“There is a spontaneity that can be lost between sketch and final art, but as my sketches are so simple, I don’t usually finish a sketch to a high level before embarking on the final piece.”
—Rian Hughes