BOWIE NIGHTS: JONATHAN BARNBROOK - WIN ULTRA RARE BOWIE 45
“Johnny looks up at the stars...”
JONATHAN BARNBROOK DESIGNED & SIGNED 7" SINGLE: I'M AFRAID OF AMERICANS - Exclusive giveaway for Bowie Nights on 19 May
To celebrate Jonathan Barnbrook’s talk 'Designing Bowie' opening the Bowie Nights series, Lightroom are offering three lucky attendees the chance to take home something very, very special.
To be in with a chance of becoming the proud owner of an extremely limited edition 7" single, all you need to do is attend the event and ask Jonathan a question in the audience Q+A. The best three questions asked will each win a record!
Jonathan designed the outer sleeve, inner art card, and a unique hand finished label for these 7" records to mark the opening of You’re Not Alone at Lightroom. Each of the records are hand numbered as editions of a very limited 105-record run.
Side A: I’m Afraid of Americans
Side AA: "Heroes", live at the Bridge School '96
These records are not for sale anywhere and totally exclusive to Lightroom, You’re Not Alone and Bowie Nights. If you want to get your hands on one: get thinking of your question to Jonathan, and we’ll see you on Tuesday, 19 May at 7pm.
Book your event ticket now via the link in @_lightroomldn ’s bio.
#BowieLightroomLDN #BowieNights #BowieBarnbrook #BowieIAOA
BOWIE NIGHTS: JONATHAN BARNBROOK - DESIGNING BOWIE
“He trod on sacred ground...”
Meet the man behind some of Bowie’s most iconic visuals.
Jonathan Barnbrook designed the album artwork for ★ (Blackstar), The Next Day, Heathen and Reality,
As if that wasn’t enough, he was also Artistic Advisor for David Bowie Is, and he designed the branding for David Bowie: You’re Not Alone. Not to mention myriad other Bowie projects.
Tuesday 19th May sees the first of Lightroom’s Bowie Nights events: Designing Bowie, wherein Jonathan will be giving a personal talk about working directly with Bowie and the story behind those covers, followed by a live audience Q+A.
Book now via the link at @_lightroomldn ’s bio 🔗🎟️
#BowieLightroomLDN #BowieNights #BowieBarnbrook
How do you create a visual identity for the greatest music of our time? Two weeks to go until Jonathan Barnbrook: Designing Bowie at Lightroom ⚡️
Bowie’s long-time creative collaborator, and the designer behind the artwork for Heathen, Reality, The Next Day and ★ (Blackstar), takes the stage for a one-of-a-kind visual talk and live Q+A.
For Bowie fans and design lovers alike, this is not one to miss.
Book via the link in bio 🎟️
Some images from the launch of the Bowie show ‘You’re Not Alone’ @_lightroomldn – we worked with them and the Bowie estate, creating the logos and imagery. These include the main logo (there are others with a similar concept which will be revealed later), which takes the typography from various periods of Bowie’s creative life. And yes I am some of you can guess exactly where each piece of lettering is from.
The emphasis for the images, in contrast, was very much on ‘performance’. This is a show about Bowie in his own words, featuring a huge range of his creative output, but there are also some incredibly recreated live performances. Last night they played ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’ from the last Ziggy Stardust gig at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, a line of which is used for the show’s title. It is almost impossible to match the excitement of a live gig on film, but this is one of the closest I have seen – I’m very excited for people to experience what a fantastic job they have done.
VERY pleased to announce that @barnbrookstudio will be speaking at All Flows 2026, 13-15 May at @mk_gallery in Milton Keynes, UK
Jonathan Barnbrook is the founder of Barnbrook, one of Britain’s most well-known and highly regarded independent creative studios, based in London. They work with a variety of clients across the globe and projects of varying scale. From overseeing the brand identity and environmental graphics of Art Basel and Roppongi Hills to their award winning David Bowie album covers.
Barnbrook’s contribution to design was recognised with a retrospective at the Design Museum in London entitled Friendly Fire in 2007 and at Ginza Graphic Gallery in 2004. A touring exhibition of the studio’s work Collateral Damage was staged in various countries, including France, Croatia and Slovenia.
General Admission now live — save £50 before the final release.
Coming with your studio or team? Group discounts available. https://allflows.live 🎟️
Massive thanks to our first 2026 Partners; @culturemiltonkeynes@captureone@creativeboom ❤️🔥
We’ve had a lot of messages about these particular posters, so we thought we’d explain them a bit more clearly. All of them were made specifically for fly-posting and were never sold at the time. There were (we think) three rounds of fly-posting before the album was released. These posters are from the first round, and went up in New York, LA, Boston, San Francisco and Chicago in February 2013. We deliberately chose not to feature any image of David Bowie. Because they relate to a forthcoming release, they deal instead with ideas of consumer desire and anticipation. The white square interrupts that process, and the words The Next Day suggest that desire is never quite satisfied
All the images in this series are library photographs. Part of the concept was that there should be nothing individual about them at all – they weren’t specially shot, they already existed, ready for use in advertising. Each image symbolises an aspect of aspirational consumerism: the woman spraying perfume suggests increased attractiveness through purchase; the interior represents the promise of a beautiful home or holiday and a happier future; the tablet stands for the consumer device that makes leisure time more absorbing; and the hyper-real, almost Pop image of the drink symbolises the promise of consumer ‘abundance’.
A limited number of these very rare original flyposters available at shop.barnbrook.net
We’ve are consolidating the studio archive and have just released a small batch of original 2013 flyposters from ‘The Next Day’. There are two series. Series 1 focused on objects of consumer desire. Series 2 is directly connected to Bowie – featuring lyrics and the photography from the album’s package design. These were created as teasers for album launch and appeared on the streets of New York. They’re extremely rare, and we only have a handful left.
Each poster is an original production piece from 2013, not a reprint or later edition. They were never meant for sale, so this is a rare chance to get one.
They’re priced at £250 for the less-rare designs and £400 for the scarce ones – we know that’s not small money, but they’re genuinely hard to find and we’ve kept pricing as modest as possible. You can choose to have it signed by Jonathan Barnbrook or left unsigned.
Available now in the shop at barnbrook.net.
In these difficult times it is more important than ever that designers are politically engaged. Our studio has a rich history of activism, always believing the design has great power to speak the truth. We felt it was the right time to put these online on our main website. An archive of it all is now available at
In the spirit of the work it can be downloaded, used, put on your wall and remixed for free via a Creative Commons licence.
#PoliticalArt #ActivistArt #ResistanceArt #ArtAsProtest #GraphicResistance #DesignForChange #ProtestGraphics #Barnbrook #BarnbrookStudio #BarnbrookDesign #GraphicDesign #DesignActivism #TypographyDesign #DesignHistory #VisualCulture #ContemporaryDesign
@creativecommons
Many of you will know that studio members Anıl Aykan and Jonathan Barnbrook have their own music project called ‘Fragile Self’ @fragile_self – a chance, they believe, to explore the relationship between music and visuals in its purest form.
Their latest release is the second single, ‘Notes from Underground’, from their forthcoming album ‘OCD’. The song draws inspiration from Dostoevsky’s novel of the same name, delving into the psyche of an individual estranged from modern society. The video, echoing Samuel Beckett’s play ‘Not I’, features only a single spotlight on a mouth, filmed in one take, representing the inner monologue of the fragmented self.
Mixed and engineered by Steve D’Agostino and Katia Isakoff · Mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Cicely Balston · Director: Chris Turner · Director of Photography: Luke Scully · Colourist: Vic Parker · Make-up: Karolina Gruszecka
YouTube link for video in Bio. #fragileself #dosteyevski #beckett #electro #electronics #abbeyroad
‘Hidden Realms: Korean Artists Today’ is the third in the series we have designed for @artasiapacific which looks at the creative practices of nine artists from South Korea. The visual concept takes on the themes of mystery and obscurity, with the front and back cover images representing inner spirit and introversion. The main typography follows the visual style of the series with a prominent capital letter on the cover. In this book, the letter ‘S’ is highlighted on the cover to create an interplay with the images. The two fonts selected for this publication are created by female designers only as the book contains only female artists.
