I was chatting with a fellow designer who happens to be a friend the other day while visiting his studio for a project collaboration. We got on to the subject about logo history books and I mentioned to him about this book Logo Life: Life Histories of 100 Famous Logos and he asked if I would send him some pictures of the book when I got back,
Here is The Logo Creatives book review of Logo Life: Life Histories of 100 Famous Logos
Any professional logo designer will probably have a few logo books handy for reference and from my experience they can be divided into two catagory types: those that are just full of dull, unimaginative marks that show no signs of creativity and those, like this wonderful book, that reveals the well thought out designs that have stood the test of time including many of today’s well-known brands and lots of legendary logos covering brands such as Apple, FedEx, Adidas, McDonald’s, Google, Nike, and Coka-Cola plus many more!.
The book is a handy size well printed though it does have a nice table of contents spread printed on yellow paper with white numbers (which are a little uneasy on the eyes set on that bright yellow background) next to the black company names. Whats also nice is the brands are listed in alphabetical order so when searching for a company name is’t super fast to find it and flick through which is very nice!… And under £20, it’s a bargain!
It’s one of a few I have found over the years that compiles established well-known big brand logos and their history into one handy sized book. The book is brought to us by Dutch publisher BIS and creative director Ron van der Vlugt.
The author Ron van der Vlugt has devised a simple, straightforward layout for the hundred companies, mostly American or European. Each starts on a left-hand page with a few hundred words about their history and specific details regarding the logo and changes over the years.
The right-hand page shows how the logo has changed over time with several historical examples that are nicely dated and frequently the designer or design company is named. Many of the designs run over onto the next spread with graphics of them in use. It’s a lovely jampacked logo book of company logo history and inspiration.
As you can see the Coca-cola logo spans over 6 pages starting with some history around the logo and its type followed by a timeline of the logo’s development over the years and some nice graphic illustrations.
The Google logo history spans 4 pages including a rather large timeline of the logo’s development over the years and it’s nice to see the progression and change in such a small space and McDonalds logo history shows an example of the logo timeline and page images to follow.
There are more logos in the book that have larger spreads but most of the logos featured in the book are two pages like some of the brands we mentioned earleir in the article such as Adidas, FeDex and Nike.
Overall this is a book I would definitely recommend you purchase as its good for logo design history and serves well as a reference guide and would make a great addition to any logo designers logo book library collection plus it looks great on the bookshelf.
Hopefully, there will be a revised edition due to how great this book is that features new brand trademarks as we all know brands evolve and so do their logos. If you would like to own your own copy of this wonderful book I would recommend Wordey the get your copy from, I always purchase my books from here without fail as they are cheaper than Amazon normally and comes with super speedy free delivery and a free bookmark.
Purchase This Book
