Design your way

Inspiration can be one of the hardest things to come by for any form of graphic design. Fortunately, there are some great logo design books out there to help you (or a friend) out.

A quick Google search will yield up an absolute ton of logo books. It can be hard to pick out the good ones that are worth your hard earned dollars. Here’s a list of the best you can find out there, the ones that don’t just offer you pretty images or tutorials, but real ideas that get to the heart of great logo design. “

Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities

If you’re looking to start a collection of the best logo design books, this one is a great place to start. It truly is one of the best logo books published to date.

It breaks down the subject of logo design into the basics, as well as giving insight into just how to function as a successful logo designer. It includes a number of excellent images demonstrating the logo design process from the sketchbook stage to the very final prints.

Logo Design Loves: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities covers a number of subjects.s It discusses what the best practices are for extending a logo into a complete brand identity system, talks about why one logo design is ultimately more effective than another one is, how to create your own iconic logo designs, what makes some graphic designer stand out among the crowd, and includes 31 useful design tips to help you create timeless logos.

Pick this book up at any retailer online or in person. It is a great addition to your professional library and will see you picking it up off the shelf many times.

Symbol

This is a truly inspiring reference for symbols in their purest state. It is presented in black and white, making things clear and offering no thrills to confuse or get in the way.

This book presents a collection of over 1300 symbols, all showcased beautifully and organized in a clear, thoughtful way.

All of the symbols in the book are arranged according to their visual characteristics. You’ll find it easy to navigate through it whenever you need a reference or a bit of logo inspiration. It’s a hefty book that you can find at any retailer online and many in person.

Logotype

Images aren’t the only important thing that you might need a reference for when designing logos.

This book covers type and functions very similar to Symbol in both concept and presentation. It is just as wonderfully organized and clear. It is a great way to get ideas for what kind of typeface to use for your logo designs.

This book pairs really wonderfully with Symbol and you should buy both. It’s a great source of inspiration and will be something you pull off the shelf many times to help you out of a rut.

Bruno Munari: Circle, Square, Triangle

Bruno Munari published this great set if logo design books in the 1960s. It is a set of visual case studies on shapes, just like the title suggests, specifically a study of the circle, the square, and the triangle. It’s not for nothing we’re recommending this book.

Pablo Picasso has been quoted as calling Bruno Munari “the Leonardo of our time”. He’s someone that you should pay close attention to, then, because he was one of the great graphic designers of the past century.

Bruno Munari pulls examples from across the globe and throughout time, even from Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece.

He makes the case that each of these basic shapes has specific important qualities. The circle is closely linked to the divine. The square is a symbol that signifies enclosure and safety. The triangle offers designers a key connective form.

It’s only recently that this trilogy of logo design books has been published in a single affordable single volume paperback book. Pick it up to get a thoughtful and academic look at some of the most common shapes used in modern logo design.

Logo: The Reference Guide to Symbols and Logotypes

This is a truly vast collection of more than 1300 symbols and logotypes. They have been clearly and smartly organized into 75 separate categories according to their basic visual forms. It includes the word of some past masters of design, like Paul Rand and Saul Bass.

It also contains some of the most exciting and innovative work from more contemporary, up-and-coming designer throughout the world. This logo book provides a complete and taxonomical guide to the history, development, and style of identity and logo design. Get it at just about any online retailer.

Logo Modernism

This Taschen publication is unprecedented among logo design books. One of its authors is the great Jen Muller. It offers a collection of about 6000 trademarks, all focused on the period of 1940-1980.

This logo design book provides a thorough examination of how modernist attitudes and imperatives gave rise to modern corporate identity. It covers a whole range of trademarks, including media outfits, retail giants, airlines, and art galleries.

It is one of the most sweeping surveys of trademarks out there. This book is organized into a trio of design-oriented chapters: Geometric, Effect, and Typographic.

Every chapter is further divided into form and style sections like the alphabet, overlay, dots, and squares. It’s a great reference for understanding modern design.

Pentagram Marks: 400 Symbols and Logotypes

This is one of the most beautiful logo design books you can find. It is a portfolio-like publication. It shows off Pentagram’s logo design from the last forty years, covering a great deal of logo design of the past century.

It is entirely printed in black and white to allow for clear understanding of the details of all the images. Every one of the 400 logo designs in the logo book is given its own individual page. They are all named, dated, and organized in alphabetical order.

This allows for a truly novel, interesting, and educational approach to the design of these logos. While it would be very interesting to gain a broader understanding of these logos in a larger context, this one has its own use.

Flicking through the pages of this logo design book is truly inspiring, especially if you find yourself stuck in a design rut. It’s a great logo book to have on your shelf above your work desk.

Los Logos (Series of Logo Books)

This is a trilogy of logo design books. They are all available in a series of fine hardbacks. All three of them are great and known as the Los Logos series.

They are, in order, Los Logos, Dos Logos, and Tres Logos. You might need to look each of them up by title specifically in order to find them.

This series being together more than 3000 works by more than 200 designers from around the world. Los logos demonstrates a wealth of cutting-edge designs and contains more than 444 pages. It is the ultimate collection of contemporary logo design.

It is very well organized with a great index. The subjects are all cataloged and systemically structured. It is a popular bestseller and makes from a truly formidable research tool for any designer or even cultural enthusiast.

Marks of Excellence: The History and Taxonomy of Trademarks

This wonderful logo design book was first published in 1997, just before the arrival of the new millennium. It is a rigorous exploration of the idea of trademarks. It discusses their history, development, style, classification, and relevance in the modern world.

It includes an extensive discussion of its origin in ancient history, monograms, owner’s marks, and certificates of origins.

It also includes a comprehensive taxonomy of trademarks as well as an alphabetical index of trademark themes. This logo design book is a text that covers every element of the trademark.

It includes chapters that discuss the idea of corporate identity and communication design, with a special emphasis on sign theory. The core of the book includes a comprehensive classification of trademarks that covers name marks, abbreviations, and every form of picture marks.

Following that is an alphabetical index of trademarks covering everything from animals to word puzzles. It is illustrated with a selection of the best trademarks in the world, which are the marks of excellence that the book is named after.

In its final section, this logo book covers the development of trademarks over time and across the world, including the effects of language and travel.

Marks of Excellence: The History and Taxonomy of Trademarks is an excellent reference tool for designs students and professional graphic designers.

It includes 600 illustrations of rare and recognizable trademarks, logos, sign, advertisements, and the images that inspired them to be made.

The newly revised and extended version includes at the very least 600 new images and 8- pages of new material that brings this already wonderful book up to date. It keeps all the information of the original books but adds a lot more in terms of both appearance and substance.

It will appeal to fans who made frequent use of the older editions well as have a lot of meaning to brand new students of the art of design. This book is truly monumental.

It has left and will continue to leave a massive mark on the world of design. It’s an absorbing read for anyone who is interested in the complex and storied field of visual communication.

Logo Life: Life Histories of 100 Famous Logos

There is an overabundance of infographics that show how famous logos have developed and changed over time. It’s almost a field of study unto itself and the development of various logos are the subjects of many articles and even book—all just focused on one logo!

This, however, is one of the few books that compiles the history of the development of many well-known logos into one resource. It offers chronological and step-by-step guides to how one hundred brands have developed over the course of time.

One of the best features of the book is that it includes many early if not many of the first, logo designs that companies used. This means that a reader can get a kind of before and after view, that shows how far companies have come.

It allows you gain an understanding of the logic and heritage behind a company’s logo design- -and not just for one company, but for one hundred of them. This makes a great and educational read for anyone who wants to do logo design.

Identify: Basic Principles of Identity Design in the Iconic Trademarks of Chermayeff & Geismar

This logo design book covers some of the most iconic, well-known, and powerful logos of the past century: the NBC peacock, Chase Bank’s blue octagon, Mobil Oil’s arresting red ‘o’, PBS’s poetic silhouettes of the everyman, and more.

This great logos were all designed by the design firm Chermayeff & Geismar. Chermayeff & Geismar may not themselves be a household name, but their work can still be found in just about every corner of the world—and even in one case, on another world, because there the official logo for the U.S.

Bicentennial is currently sitting on Mars. This design firm has generated the visual identities that have become integral parts of American culture. These images are instantly recognizable by millions of people.

This book was written by a trio of legendary designers Tom Geismar, Ivan Chermayeff and Sagi Haviv.

It is the ultimate authoritative examination of the approach, process, and principles that have created the firm Chermayeff & Geismar’s iconic logo designs time and time again. This book breaks down just what goes into creating successful logos.

Logograma: Logo Design for Dynamic Identities

Great logo designs will add an extra epical something to your brand. It’s important to learn how to create a logo that truly represents the brand or organization while appealing to your target audience.

This logo book offers a great guide to doing just that. It looks at a large number of dynamic logos. It explains how changing key aspects of every one of them, like their colors, form, and typography can make a large impact on how audience view the logo.

With Logograma: Logo Design for Dynamic Identities, you can take a look at the constantly evolving nature of logo design and how you can adapt your logo designs to that quickly changing and fiercely competitive environment.

Archetypes in Branding: A Toolkit for Creatives and Strategists

This is one of the great reference logo design books. It is a very effective and incredibly practical tool for anyone who works in the field of marketing and branding. It uses a very participatory approach to branding strategies.

It also includes 60 beautiful and very useful brand archetype care that will help you understand how to master the difficult art of branding. This is wonderful reference book as you try to work out a comprehensive branding campaign and you should pick it up!

Star Brands: A Brand Manager’s Guide to Build, Manage & Market Brands

This is an easy-to-use and approachable guide.

It gives the details of the star brand model of building, managing, and marketing any brand for anything. It offers a step-by-step process that is very easy to follow and allows you to asses a brand’s unique challenges, as well as defining the brand’s equity and target, crafting a solid brand growth strategy, and measuring success once the brand is in the market.

It includes a number of case studies from famous brands and interviews with leaders of multiple industries. This includes interviews from business school professors, advertising agency leaders, and former CEOs.

In this book, the author Carolina Rogoll uses her experience at building brands for a large multinational company with some cutting-edge marketing and management theory.

This results in a book that makes for a great reference for anyone who is looking to gain structured guidance for building a brand for a client or business, managing that brand, or even just the massive undertaking of starting a brand for yourself.

Brand the Change: The Branding Guide for Social Entrepreneurs

This book provides documentation of the brand building process step by step. It goes through the experiences of dozens of amazing and innovative brands in a series of case studies.

It also features seven guest author essays on many different topics, including trademarking to digital marketing. There are 23 tools and exercises included in the book that will help anyone who wants to be a change maker to build their own strong brand.

It’s a great reference for those who want to build an innovative product, create a service for good, spread a new idea, or position yourself as a leader in your field.

It offers a great guide to thinking like a brand strategist will help you to create a clear, compelling offers, developing unique brand experiences, and performing the difficult task of attracting and converting the right audiences.

Brand Intervention: 33 Steps to Transform the Brand You Have Into the Brand You Need

This is the first book written just for CEOs, entrepreneurs, brands, and startups to provide them with a guide to branding. It was written to provide the tools these leaders need to get their brand seen, heard, and ready to make a mark on the world.

It was written and designed by the award-winning brand expert and rebranding specialist David Brier. This makes it a great reference book for designers and business leaders alike who are looking to develop a brand.

It is especially valuable when you encounter challenges in your branding campaign since it offers great tips and tricks that help get you out of a creative rut, all of which have proven useful time and time again.

Eat & Go: Branding & Design Identity for Takeaways & Restaurants

Branding or restaurants and eaters is its own field. More and more of them provide both table services but also make food that can be eaten elsewhere. Businesses need to figure out a way to please both types of diners.

This is a challenge for graphic designers, who now need to figure out a way to combine convenience, practicality, the food’s distinctive features, and a brand’s appeal with appealing graphic design. This book provides a smart and comprehensive guide to doing just this.

America’s Greatest Brands

This book covers the history, recent developments, innovations, green initiatives, brand values, and achievements of some of the most admired companies in the world.

It includes the expert opinions and experts of the American Brands councils, which consists of the some of the respected communications and marketing professionals in the country.

The book includes a special section titled American’s Great Classic Brands, which are American brands that are over 100 years old and still making a mark. It’s a unique and intriguing reference book that is great for anyone who wants to understand how a brand builds itself up.

Rhetoric of Logos: A Primer for Visual Language

Logotype is one of the most important aspects of corporate design and is a serious challenge for any designer. Good logotype is by definition a persuasive logotype that creates a direct link to rhetoric. Rhetoric is how a brand persuades people and makes its argument.

This book goes into the effectiveness of how logotype can make a serious difference for any logo and brand. It looks at it all through the lens of rhetoric, a study that goes back more 2500 years.

Brandlife: Cafés and Coffeehouses

Covering topics from conception to application, BRANDLife: Cafés & Coffeehouses attests the power of branding through 57 tasteful graphic identity and interior design projects from around the world.

Through interviews with design whiz and head of top coffee roasters, the book offers an insider’s view on the making of coffee institutions that play up today’s experience-driven coffee culture.

Branding: In Five and a Half Steps

In Branding: In Five and a Half Steps, Michael Johnson strips everyday brands down to their basic components, with case studies that enable us to understand why we select one product or service over another and allow us to comprehend how seemingly subtle influences can affect key life decisions.

The first part of the book shows how the birth of a brand begins not with finding a solution but rather with identifying the correct question―the missing gap in the market―to which an answer is needed.

Johnson proceeds to unveil hidden elements involved in creating a successful brand―from the strapline that gives the brand a narrative and a purpose to clever uses of typography that unite design and language.

First Things First!: New Branding and Design for New Businesses

First Things First! features real examples from shop owners and mechanics, dentists and organic farmers – businesses discovering corporate design for the first time – as well as from traditionally creative companies like marketing agencies, restaurants, and hotels.

Recognise Me: Branding

This richly illustrated and informative book is more than a book about brands. Ken Cato reviews the learnings across 45 years of building, extending and conceiving brands from around the world.

With first-hand experience in working cross-culturally in more than 100 countries, the author’s insights, strategy and design thinking that drives brand identity goes to the heart of common and unique issues confronting both small and large organizations.

Designing Brand Identity

From research and analysis through brand strategy, design development through application design, and identity standards through launch and governance, Designing Brand Identity, Fourth Edition offers brand managers, marketers, and designers a proven, universal five-phase process for creating and implementing effective brand identity.

Enriched by new case studies showcasing successful world-class brands, this Fourth Edition brings readers up to date with a detailed look at the latest trends in branding, including social networks, mobile devices, global markets, apps, video, and virtual brands.

The Brand Mapping Strategy: Design, Build, and Accelerate Your Brand

Sharing hard-earned insights, advice, and best practices, brand and marketing strategist Karen Tiber Leland helps entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs, and executives create a brand by design instead of default, gain greater influence in their industries and companies, and become thought leaders in their fields.

The Brand Mapping Strategy uses proven strategies, best practices and anecdotes from real life brand-building successes to give readers the tools they need to design, build, and accelerate a successful brand.

LogoLounge 9

The ninth book in the LogoLounge features expert identity work by notable designers and up-and-coming talents from around the world.

LOIS Logos: How to Brand with Big Idea Logos

For over 60 years, George Lois has proven that a memorable brand name interacting with a strong visual symbol to communicate a BIG IDEA is the ultimate art form in graphic design.

LOIS LOGOS showcases over 300 of Lois’ logos and branding with his own comments on why they work. A bonus in the book is the chapter of 80 of his favourite logos by others, with Lois’ comments on their conceptual power.

Wilhelm Deffke: Pioneer of the Modern Logo

The first book ever published about Deffke, Wilhelm Deffke: Pioneer of the Modern Logo features five hundred beautifully reproduced images illustrating his achievements in poster and commercial art.

These include not only his logos for companies and products but also his designs for exhibitions and trade fairs.

Logo Creed

In Logo Creed, identity design authority Bill Gardner shares intricate details from his studio and from those of other top designers, including Miles Newlyn, Sherwin Schwartzrock, Jerry Kuyper, Felix Sockwell, Von Glitschka, Paul Howalt, Brian Miller, and David Airey.

Beyond the LOGO

Award-winning designer and agency founder, Emma Carter, gives her expert insight into how to create a brand that goes beyond a simple logo, to make your organization an unstoppable success.

Logobook

The monumental archive Houplain amassed is the foundation of this ultimate logo reference guide, featuring approximately 7,000 specimens organized alphabetically, with information about the designers, year of creation, country, brand, and company.

LogoBook offers a comprehensive compilation of logos, divided into 14 chapters by themes – including cultural, social, design and art, education, health and beauty, and sports.

In each chapter, one logo is chosen as a case study. Then, several pages are dedicated to the creation of this logo, such as outlines, work methods used, photos of the process, rejected proposals and the development of the process.

Logos & Marks in Japan 2

Logos & Marks in Japan 2 showcases hundreds of logos and marks created by Japanese designers and firms, providing ideas and inspiration for graphic designers.

Logos Talk

An instantly identifiable logo is crucial when competing for a customer’s allegiance and undivided attention.

In some cases the vibrancy of color provides the overwhelming theme, in others the subtle contrast of black and white. Logos Talk collects a staggering variety of fresh logo designs from around the world in an appealing format.

Re-logo: Redesigning the Brand

Re-logo provides graphic designers with an indispensable reference source for contemporary identity design and also serves as a valuable source of inspiration on how to redesign a logo of a brand.

Showcasing a vast, international array of current trade marks – ranging from those of small, design-led businesses to global brands – the book offers design consultancies and professional graphic creatives a ready resource to draw upon in the research phase of identity projects and redefining a brand in the marketplace.

Logology 2

Logology 2 collects a diverse array of logos, symbols, icons, mascots, emblems and graphics that all effectively achieve the goal of arresting one s attention and entering our neural networks.

Not just satisfied with today’s landscape, this book ambitiously sets out to predict the needs of tomorrow and the future of the logo, that most fundamental unit of communication design.

Ending thoughts on these logo design books

This is a great library of logo design books. They cover not just history but also core concepts that make for great and timeless logo design.

If you enjoyed reading this article about logo design books, you should read these as well:

The post Logo design books that’ll help you become a better logo designer appeared first on Design your way.

Source: https://ift.tt/2C6FI2o

Pages

Web Design