First things first, the cover of this copy looks like a total mess. Vague colors and too many scratches for what my eyes can handle. The good news? The cover says nothing – even if it was in a good condition – about the PHE-NO-ME-NAL work World Trademarks & Logotypes contains!
Unlike most of the reviewed books, this is not purely a book displaying logos one after another. World Trademarks & Logotypes is a book that goes beyond the logo and which fulfils every brand designer’s wildest dreams, sort of. The book features not only logos, but it shows them on applications as well. Some of them are briefly visualized while others extensively documented with lots of pictures.
The beauty of this book is that it perfectly shows how meaningless a logo, on itself, is. Some logos featured in this book aren’t necessarily interesting or exiting to look at, but than the power of visual identity kicks in and the extra pictures of the logo applications blows your designer brain away. World Trademarks & Logotypes contains truly unique, timeless and stunning work.
Besides visual identities, the book contains a couple of single displayed logos as well. In some cases, you just get the logo and one application. There is thus not really a coherent pace in this book when looking at what kind of work the book contains. It does contain mainly extended applications of the logo, but it also feels a bit like a book that just contains phenomenal work. Whether it is a logo, a visual identity or just a logo and a poster, every single image that you will find in this book is pure class.
To conclude, this book is definitely a book that every logo/brand designer wants in its creative life. It is one of those rare books that contains logo applications where each one of them is as great as the other.