New Logo Volume One and Two

I was at a bookstore recently, and as usual I was flipping through design books. I came across yet another in a long line of logo design books. I don't know how many books on logo design there are but there must be hundreds by now. I'm not speaking of the books on the ins and outs of the art of identity design. I'm not talking of books on the subject of how a design firm works through reams of research and information on a company, product or service in order to distill a brand down to a few lines of type and a few brush strokes. Nor am I talking about the books recounting the body of work of individual designers like Paul Rand, Saul Bass or large design concerns such as Pentagram. No, I'm referring to those logo collections containing page after page of logos. No editorial, just logos.

I have nothing against this kind of publication. Hell, our firm has gotten plenty of marks into these vehicles over the years. They serve a purpose. I refer to them a great deal, as I am sure many in the industry do. It is also a way to keep up with what our peers are doing.

But the books that I was thumbing through may have crossed the line as far as this form of design "writing" goes. New Logo Volumes One and Two by Chen Ci Liang and published out of Singapore really annoyed me. Yes there isn't a lot of difference between these books and the others, in fact the printing is well done, between the two books there are over 600 pages and thousands of marks. Quite impressive right?

Until I saw a couple of my logos in the book that is. I never entered the logos in question to this particular publisher or editor. I don't know where they got the art from. I didn't send them the files, but all of the logo examples in the book are reproduced perfectly. I know for a fact that the marks from our office that appear shown in the books are around 5 years old. The book title seems to be saying that these are volumes that are showcasing NEW work. The assumption when taking the book off the shelf, or shelling out 60 bucks for each volume is that the publishers have compiled a vast collection of the latest and greatest, the cutting edge, the here and now. Of course having a few logos that are a little long in the tooth is neither a crime nor is it a violation of the non existent editorial standards that are the currency of most logo collections. Except upon closer inspection I found marks that are decades old, like the Girl Scouts, the US Bicentennial, and the 1984 LA Olympics. I also found logos from companies that don't exist anymore like Bell Atlantic. OK, maybe it's simply a matter of a lousy title for a book, and these are not new and are a collection of the best examples of the form, and I should be proud that my work is among such quality work. I see other designers blindly touting the fact that they "made it" into these books. And of course logos actually belong to the corporations and organizations that pay for them. But it seems to me that the publisher gained access to a treasure trove of logo files and decided to make a quick buck by putting out yet another book of logos.

Maybe that's my basic problem with this. That I didn't think of it first

International Relations

This past weekend my partner Jacqueline McCarthy and I had an interesting encounter with one of our clients. We left our Seattle office a bit early on Friday afternoon and drove up to Vancouver, BC in order to meet up with Cintia Stella of Wow! Argentina. Cintia is a partner at the Buenos Aires based travel agency and she has been touring through Canada for the past three weeks, making her way westward from Montreal, Quebec City, Ottowa, Toronto and finally the last stop on her itnerary Vancouver.

It's another one of those modern business tales of developing a relationship via the telephone, email and Fedex. Sometimes it is halfway across the planet to Buenos Aires, sometimes it's halfway across town, but meeting clients face to face seems to be yet another casualty of the technological revolution. Cintia was so close, and had travelled so far that the least we could do was to take the 3 hour drive northward to meet for dinner. We had a lovely time discussing the day to day life of running a business, the hard work, the long hours and most importantly the successes. Wow! Argentina was recently added to the latest edition of the Lonely Planet Guides. So it is gratifying to see that all the hard work pays off. The conversation ranged from the cultural differences between Argentina, the United States and Canada for that matter, television shows that run in both the US and in Argentina, food and wine and futbol.

It was great to see one of our clients from south of the equator. So much so, that I'm going to make a point to meet with clients from right here in our own hometown.

Of course if you wish to vist Argentina, please talk to CintiaStella and Matias Mancuso of Wow! Argentina. You'll find that their dedication to showing you the best of their beautiful country will have you returning again and again to one of the great countries of the world. Chau!

Thelonious Sphere Monk

One of our favorite pieces from Artomat Design. This was published in The Rocket, the music magazine out of Seattle. I can't remember the date but it was probably done about 10 years ago. Still, we think that the handcrafted type, the stark contrast, the disonant letterspacing, and the dignified silhouette captures the timeless essence of the man and his music