Logo: The Reference Guide to Symbols and Logotypes by Michael Evamy (paperback)

Description

If Pentagram’s Micheal Bierut reckons a book can “make better designers of all of us,” its likely to be a pretty useful tome. The designer was heaping praise on Logo: The Reference Guide to Symbols and Logotypes by Michael Evamy.

The book draws together more than 1,300 symbols and logotypes, demonstrating, as Bierut puts it, that “the next time you are tempted to design a logo…chances are, it’s already been done.” It features a beautifully simple new Pentagram-designed cover, which features the Spin-designed logo of the former edition. The new cover uses a bright blue mark, as a deliberate contrast to the previous black and white.

All the big names are there in terms of both designers (Saul Bass, Paul Rand, Lance Wyman) and brands (Starbucks, Kodak, Disney), and there’s something compelling about leafing through such familiar visual cues and seeing them in the context of a broader design history.