BRENT ROLLINS
INTERVIEW BY STEFAN NADELMAN | permalink | posted October 3, 2008

Brent Rollins is a one-man design explosion. He’s also a core member of the Ego Trip collective who have been responsible for publishing Ego Trip magazine, The Book of Rap Lists and The Big Book of Racism. He designed the logo for the movie Boyz In the Hood, and album covers for Black Star and Spank Rock just to name a few. You name it, he’s done it, and with such deft and style that his handiwork is soaked in the sponge of hip-hop visual culture.

It’s hard not to love the Bling Bling cover, because it’s all, you know, shiny and sparkly. What are the key components and conventions to blinging out a design?
There was a graphic-design company in Texas called Pen N Pixel Graphics. I think they were like one of those “1-Stop Shop” deals. You know, come in and we’ll design your CD cover and manufacture your CDs for you for ninety-nine dollars. Actually, I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but that’s my suspicion. If that wasn’t how it all went down, I will eat a bug. Anyways, that company made a name for itself by doing all the CD covers for the then burgeoning Southern rap scene. Like, early-to-mid nineties. That scene was and is all about the flashy tacky over-the-top jewelry. Anyways, to finally answer your question, they pretty much defined blinged-out graphics: diamond encrusted logos, 3 dimensional type, gold plating, lots of digital lens flares. KPT Photoshop filter abuse.

For the Bling Bling cover I wanted to reference that stuff because, well, you can’t get away from it, but I didn’t want to actually go Photoshop-filter crazy. I chose a chunky typeface to evoke the idea of chunky jewelry, and the book title was an actual sculpted three-finger ring made by Tito the Jeweler. A very nice gentleman. He’s the guy who the rappers used to go to first for their custom stuff, before going to Jacob the Jeweler. Tito’s the man. So he made this heavy ring and provided most of the fine bling shown on the cover. 

Your cover design for Where’d You Get Those? is brilliant. Using only three elements (a photo of basketball players, a silhouette of a sneaker, and the NYC subway lines) you managed to encapsulate the essence of the book. Could you describe your process in developing this concept?
The process begins by working with people who you like, who care about what they are doing, and trying to do justice to their project. In this case, that project belonged to a Mr. Bobbito Garcia—good dude. Classic New York personality. He had been working on the book for years, well before the sneaker craze went ballistic. So the book has all these insiders discussing their relationship with sneakers during the sixties through the eighties. And, in some ways, the cover is kind of ‘insidery” as well. The photos are from street documentarian Martha Cooper, and Bob’s personal collection. And the map appearing over “Manhattan-as-Sneaker” is based on Massimo Vignelli’s short-lived 1972 subway map. That map design was only used for one year! But it’s so badass. And it’s kind of like you either know about it or you don’t. If you don’t know about it, I’m not sure how successful the visual pun is. But if you do, there’s instant nostalgia and recognition. That’s what I used to love about New York: its insularity. The text and the book cover talk to a very specific audience.

Your style is extremely bold, lively, and rich. What response are you trying to elicit when communicating through design?
Well I just kind of… I don’t know. I guess I have a broad idea of what I am going for. For me, it’s more emotional, like I am trying to elicit a particular feeling. I have things/themes/color schemes that I often revisit, but I’m not sure I repeat them specifically enough to be able to describe them succinctly. I like certain types of fonts and lettering. I like a certain degree of imperfection, but not sloppiness. 

I love the typeface choices in your work. Do you have a penchant for a certain era or genre?
I’m pretty sad. I can’t get away from my affinity for mid-to-late seventies-era type. My father was a graphic designer, and when I was a kid I used to always look through his Letraset and Agfa type-specimen books, you know, just enjoying the personality in the typefaces. Some real geek-in-training shit. Also seventies LP covers had great lettering. Some of the best ever.

When you use these stylized retro fonts, do you modify them at all?
I will sometimes modify them. It just depends. For a logo, pretty much always. I need to do my “remix” to the font; otherwise I wouldn’t really want to be taking credit for it. It’s not my design. It’s the font creator’s.

Have you ever designed or ever wanted to design your own typeface?
Speaking of which…do they even still make Fontographer anymore? I have a couple of unfinished type designs just waiting. 

Are there any must-have art/design books that have inspired your work?
Besides all the Letraset books, there are a few that were favorites when I was younger: Magnetic Storm by Roger Dean, that Art of Rock poster book. There’s a book by Jay Vigon—I used to be a big fan. A year ago I got this book Love and Joy About Letters by Ben Shahn. That’s a must have. His lettering is just ridiculous.

When it comes to designing the Ego Trip books, do the other Ego Trip guys give you carte blanche or is it a design-by-committee type of thing?
Like George Bush, I am the decider. They pretty much let me have my run. I will show them stuff and get feedback because they are my partners and I respect their input, but it’s essentially me. One night when I was working on our first book (Book of Rap Lists) I found out that I sort of bit off more than I could chew. The deadline was approaching and I had a panic attack. I was hyperventilating and freaking out cause of the workload, and one of the crew was kind of chastising me and saying that I didn’t have to go to all this trouble, the book didn’t need all the graphics and stuff, it didn’t need to be so “designed.” And I was like, Nah man. We’ve got to make this book visually entertaining as well. It’s supposed to feel very seventies, but not in a cliché way. More in a raw, imperfect way. And I was pretty insistent. It was my first book and in my mind I might not ever do another. It’s not really cool to override your partners, but I was hungry. Once the book was released it got a lot of good feedback regarding the design. And my Ego Trip partner gave me credit for sticking to my guns.

You’ve lived in L.A. and currently live in Brooklyn—where do you generally like to be when you’re at work? What fosters the best working environment for you? What music do you listen to while working?
Ultimately I work best wherever all my stuff is. In this case, that would be Brooklyn. But I think I just prefer the east coast in general. It doesn’t stimulate me the way it used to, but I don’t find myself inspired by L.A. It’s too slow.

After you did the Boyz In the Hood logo, were women all over you?
Man I wish! I did actually meet Stacy Dash during the casting of the film. She was flirting with me, looking at some illustrations of mine and made me nervous as hell. I blew it.

You’ve designed book, album and magazine covers as well as high-profile posters, logos, exhibited art, and produced several TV series for VH1. What direction do you ultimately see yourself going? What’s next up for BR?
BR is tired. I think BR would like to figure out what direction he’s going in as well. But BR is having fun. And people are increasingly letting BR do what he does without much interference. Maybe environmental? I’m into spatial designing a little bit. It’s interesting to me. I worked with an awesome production designer (Julie Jo Ferhle, I love you!) and that is kind of fun. 

What are your opinions on visual pollution?
Hmm. If American culture was older and more developed, I don’t think the visual pollution would be a problem. Look at India. Their visual pollution is awesome! It has soul. And for that reason it’s still attractive. It has meaning. But our problem—on a larger, broad scale we abandoned our craft too early. And the democracy of technology has also watered down the talent pool and devalued the artist. So there are a lot of people who have access to the technology to create graphics, but they don’t know how to do them well and there’s no one to tell them otherwise. So less people care. And so when you collectively look at the results, it is just reflective of our disposable culture. Increasingly, less things are done with care or made to last.