9 Designs that Inspired BRAT's Art Director, Brent David Freaney I Source Material
Summary
Art directors shouldn't start color decisions on computers—instead, collect physical references from everyday life (airports, streets, magazines) and translate them digitally. Brent David Freaney, art director at i-D magazine, built his studio's entire color palette from a 1990s McDonald's brand guideline, proving that unconventional design sources often outperform digital-first approaches.
Key Takeaways
- Bypass digital tools for initial color exploration by collecting physical color references from real-world environments (airports, streets, homes), then rearrange physical shapes before translating to digital space.
- Study 'accidental design'—work created by non-designers (church pamphlets, utility documents)—to discover authentic, opinionated aesthetic choices outside polished design conventions.
- Use foundational color theory books like Josef Albers' 'Interaction of Color' and 'Dictionary of Color Combinations' as active working bibles, not static references, to break habitual color pairings.
- Extract brand identity systems from unexpected sources (McDonald's 90s guidelines, airport signage) and reverse-engineer their color relationships to create distinctive studio palettes.
- Resist the 'sweetgreenification' trend where designs must look friendly and app-like; instead, find beauty in functional, utilitarian design with strong opinions and unconventional compositions.
Related topics
Transcript Excerpt
Hi, I'm Brent David Freaney. I'm an art director and designer. This is my Source Material. There are these sort of like two different types of things that I collect that I love. Like one is sort of like obviously these really core design typographic visual books that have sort of feel, you know, very text and very sort of like important from a foundational structure. And then there's just sort of like the things that I collect along the way that I feel like are really important, to round out or sort of like tone what my aesthetic or what the, you know, the way that I kind of see things. We have Josef Albers Interaction of Color. I think that color is really important to my work. Color has always been something that I'm really, really interested in. I think color theory obviously is somethi…