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The Untold Stories Behind 29 Classic Logos
Mark Sinclair
Contents
Saul Bass
1969
Gerry Barney,
Design Research Unit
1964
David Gentleman
1969
William Golden
1951
Jean Widmer,
Visuel Design Association
1977
Allan Fleming,
Cooper and Beatty
1960
Gerald Holtom
1958
Frank Mason Robinson
1886
Anton Stankowski,
Stankowski + Duschek
1974
Mike Dempsey,
Carroll, Dempsey & Thirkell
1991
Otl Aicher
1974
Milton Glaser,
Milton Glaser, Inc.
1975
Edward Johnston
1916
OGalop
1898
Coordt von Mannstein,
Graphicteam Kln
1968
Bruno Monguzzi
1983
Bruce Blackburn,
Danne & Blackburn
1974
Ian Dennis,
HDA International
1974
Manolo Prieto
1956
Edward Young
1935
FutureBrand Buenos
Aires and Lima
2010
Unknown
1907
Ben Bos,
Total Design
1966
Joan Mir
1984
Wolff Olins
1999
Paul Rand
1961
Alan Fletcher,
Pentagram
1989
Franco Grignani
1964
Sir Peter Scott
1961
Introduction
The seeds of this book were sown in a special issue of Creative Review magazine, in which my colleagues and I attempted to tell the stories behind the creation of some of the worlds best-known logos. As with the issue, this book is also a group of favourites, rather than an attempt at a definitive best ever list. The logos are not ranked in any order; while they have each vied for attention in the real world, they are not in competition here.
My use of the term logo is as a catch-all that includes logotypes (typographic or wordmark logos) and symbols (pictorial logos). Of the 29 featured, for example, 13 are symbolic in nature, 13 are based on an arrangement of letterforms, and the remaining three are best described as a combination of the two approaches. And yet, they are all so different. One was conceived on a scrap of paper in the back of a taxi (I Love New York), while another was thought-up in the shower (V&A); one owes its existence to latenineteenth-century penmanship (Coca-Cola), another to a trip to London Zoo (Penguin). Each of them, in its own way, has a story to tell.
As well as products, the selection includes logos designed for transport services, such as the London Underground and the Canadian National railway, and organizations, both cultural and charitable, from the Muse dOrsay in Paris and the Tate galleries in London, Liverpool and St Ives, to WWF and CND.
Some slightly more esoteric entities also get a lookin, from the expressive face created from the initials of the English National Opera, to the striking bull silhouette devised for the Osborne drinks brand, and the lighting company ERCOs subtle play on the process of illumination itself. As these three examples highlight, while logo design is a serious business (with serious implications for businesses), it is one in which the results can be evocative and playful, even pleasing to the eye and the mind. The aim of a logo, after all, is to connect with the viewer and create a visual shortcut between it and the service or company, institution or organization that it represents.
Most of the logos featured in the book date from many years ago: some stretch back to the early part of the twentieth century, others cluster around the middle years. A much smaller group emerges closer to the millennium. Resonance is important here: it takes a long time for a logo to acquire its place in the world, and many more years for some idea of its worth to be properly considered. There is the sense that the evolution of many of these logos can now be told with some perspective, that the dust has settled on them.
Many of the examples are now well established in the collective visual culture, some at a national level, some international. Some were in use for years but have since been retired; others are still working hard and have been applied to a host of different media. They are now found on screens as often as they are in print.
Yet some contemporary designers have been vocal about their dismissal of the logos place in the twenty-first century. The holistic brand experience and the development of branding systems and languages are, we are told, the driving methodologies behind the visual communications of todays companies and organizations.
Certainly, new technologies have enabled motion graphics, animation and the internet to reinvigorate static logos Saul Basss work for Bell Systems, which opens the book, is an early example and todays world includes plenty of logo systems, from Aol to MIT, that have helped to reconfigure the landscape of identity design.
But these excursions inevitably reflect our own time and the symbol, the mark, the logotype the logo whatever we choose to call it, is invariably still there. It is doing its job as part of a wider picture, but doing it nonetheless. That central role has not changed very much since the time of the earliest designs included here.
And while some of these logos are certainly fixed to a particular point in time, many of them have been adapted to continue working long after they were first designed. Simple cosmetic changes can reflect the attitudes of the day, such as the fact that the Michelin Man no longer smokes a cigar, while the graphic evolution of the WWF panda represents the new breadth to the organizations approach to conservation.
At the same time, some logos have seamlessly been embraced by a new generation of designers to give them a new lease of life. Troika studios kinetic version of the V&A logo, which spins above the entrance to the museum in South Kensington Tube subway, is a perfect example of this. Alan Fletchers stroke of genius in removing a leg of the A and letting the ampersand supply the crossbar had produced a striking monogram in 1989. Twenty years later, it was transformed into a palindromic sculpture in which the letters twist on their own axis, deconstructing and remaking the logo each time it revolves. One can imagine that Fletcher would have enjoyed the celebration of his work in this way, and would also have been pleased that his design contained another surprise within its form, which was just waiting for the right moment to appear.
That capacity for renewal, for me, adds to the case for its status and inclusion in the book. I hope that the stories behind the other 28 logos will, in their own ways, offer similar revelations.
BELL SYSTEM
Saul Bass
1969
The Bell System was the name given to the sprawling network of 23 separate US companies that provided the country with its telecommunications from the time the first licensed exchanges had been set up in the late 1870s until the group was broken up by the US government in 1984. Headed up by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) from 1885, the system was effectively a sanctioned monopoly. By 1968, it was also the worlds biggest corporation with a million employees and 100 million telephone lines running across North America. The scale of the company was unprecedented, and when the designer Saul Bass was asked to look at overhauling the Bell System identity it was the largest design project of its kind.
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