Category: Design / Branding/Identity,

As has been well blogged about in recent times, there are an awful lot of hipster-esque identites surfacing around the traps. I suspect partially because there's an undeniable beauty to the pared-down elegance of that look, but I also suspect there's a certain 'ease' factor (some might call it 'lazy'!) in generating them.

I was fortunate enough to be taught design by lecturers who were passionate about the craft aspect of typography and identity design — and honestly, it feels like a bit of the 'craft' of logo design has been waning in recent times. It was a breilliant and timely reminder of how much value there is in really applying a sense of craft to logo design to see this post on iso50 recently.

The work of Herb Lubalin (for whom Unit Editions have recently published a spectacular tome on), Milton Glaser, Alan Fletcher, Paul Rand, Otl Aicher and co. really is far too valuable to not 'channel' in some way for anyone setting out to create a logo. I've always found something quite therapeutic about the process of logo creation — to distill a huge variety of qualities and values of who or what it is to represent and conjure up a succinct and memorable mark that has impact and longevity. It sounds a bit dramatic and stressful but it is in so many ways the essence of what we do every day.

So here's my vote for a serious look back at the streamlined, stylised, bold, high-impact and thought-laden examples of logos from the past. There's a good reason they still look sexy — and there's much to learn from them.