- 0
- 21 Mar ’11
Share!
Tres Logos
Tomorrow I’m going to be posting about a logo I worked on recently. Well, to be more precise, the process of creating the logo and in advance of that I thought it would be a nice to do a small review of a book I bought about a month or so ago.
Tres Logos, published by Gestalten is the book in question and in case you havn’t guessed from the title or the above sentence it’s all about logo’s. It’s the third in a series of five Los Logos books. The latest, number 5, was released just last August.
I had never seen the book before, had no intentions of buying a design book that day, but when I passed by the design shelf in Hodges & Figges I saw this thing and it just kind of jumped off the shelf and mugged me for my wallet right there in the aisle! So €25 later I’m sitting at home, a brilliant cyan hardback with a de-bossed white title, 500 pages or logos packed sometimes 12 to a page, resting on my lap. This thing is not a book, it’s a veritable tome of logo design.
About two hours of flicking later, I closed the cover back down upon it and realised that that was it, every logo has now been designed. My input to the logo design world is no longer required. So I slid it into the bookshelf and there it was expected to sit unopened henceforth until the next time I worked on a brand identity. The overwhelming mass of design contained therein can be enough to cause overload and design synapse collapse. By rights the last thing I should want to do after seeing that many logos is to design more logos. But now, thats ALL I want to do. It hasn’t sat there unopened at all, it’s been yo-yoing on and off the shelf ever since.
This is probably the highest compliment I can pay Tres Logos, it made me fall in love with logo design again. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, but now I’m thinking logos 24/7, which is something I have not done in years.
On every page there is a colour, the curve of a font, the quirky realisation of a character or silhouette that begs to be revisited. So I’m constantly dipping back in and out. What was that colour I saw, or the font used in that logo? How could I use that to take what I’m doing to the next level?
When am I going to get to do more logo design? There isn’t much brand development happening in work at the moment so I’m seriously thinking about developing my own personal projects. Possibly designing a logo for my son, who, is a mere four weeks away from being born. He might become the world’s first “brand baby”. Every major developmental step he takes becoming a logo. Each one representing a stage in his progress as a human being. His path through early life recorded in a form of modern hieroglyphics. We won’t be getting out the baby photo book when the girlfriends start coming around and want to see how cute he looked. They can have a pen with the logo for his first steps. Or some postit notes embossed with his first smile logo. And so anew depths of potential child embarrassment are plumbed.
These are the kinds of things this book has me thinking about!! God knows how much worse it will get if I buy the other four volumes. But back to the review. I’m not going to go into depth about individual logos that stood out for me or try to wax lyrical about the quality of the editorial content, I’m not a book critic, I’m a designer. I’m who this book is targetting. To the publishers, Gestalten, all I can say is, good aim!
Be warned Los Logos may possibly wreck your brain with inspiration, but it’s worth it. If you are into logo design do yourself a favour and go buy it here.
