Symbols that can endure, differentiate, communicate and work hard across media and touchpoints are hard to do, but groups such as Johnson Banks, Frost, Pentagram, BankerWessel, Chermayeff Geismar Haviv, Koto, GBH and Supple Studio are proving over and over again that it can be done – without sparking a Twitter-quake. Thankfully, there are still design groups making the case for symbols and visual ideas that can engage audiences and become the centrepiece of brand identities. Brands have leant towards typography and away from emblems and imagery, all-too-aware, probably, of the baying mob ready to Tweet to death any kind of symbolic slip-up.
In logo design that aspiration has led to greater simplicity, directness and a kind of pre-digital flatness. Spreads from the revised edition of Logo by Michael Evamy Marketers and brands strive to give us authenticity, which in the hands of some comes in the form of male models dressed as if they’ve just come from building the Manchester Ship Canal, and in others is a stripped-down, no-frills design approach that aspires to timelessness, economy and longevity. Today, post-Trump, post-Cummings, mid-pandemic, we long for truth and transparency. Super-reflective metallic crests made the leap from car bonnets to the printed page, amoebic globes and amorphous blobs clung to wordmarks, and nameless dripping liquids strained bandwidth as they animated home pages. Curves, contours and complex colour gradients were deceiving the eye everywhere you looked. In 2007, the creative world was in thrall to skeuomorphic user interfaces and 3D icons. Much has changed in logo design since the original edition was published. It’s a major transfusion of new material and a few classics, collected and selected from around 100 of the most accomplished and original practitioners in the field. Around a third of the wordmarks and symbols from the first book have gone, replaced by 600 of more recent vintage, bringing the total number of marks up to 1,500.
The content of the book is tangibly different. Fourteen years on from its original publication, it’s high time things changed. There’s a lot that’s different about the new edition of my book, Logo, which has just been published by Laurence King.
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