These days, social media is awash with budding graphic designers giving their opinion every time a new corporate identity comes to town, often turning their hand to shaping an alternative in a matter of seconds. Pentagram’s 1,000 Marks is the professionals fighting back, a relentless parade of one thousand individual brand marks designed over the agency’s long history.
1,000 Marks by Pentagram – brand logos explored
From 1,000 Marks by Pentagram
From 1,000 Marks by Pentagram
Here you’ll find everything from organic food producers to massive multinationals, supermarkets, museums, even countries, condensed down into a stark black and white typographical graphic symbol, logo or word mark. It’s a masterclass in concision, an alphabetical journey through the history of our age.
From 1,000 Marks by Pentagram
From 1,000 Marks by Pentagram
Presented almost without context – just name, date and sector – there’s a wealth of inspiration here for designers, as well as providing a useful reference to ensure there’s no ‘accidental’ homages or outright steals.
Logo Rhythm: Band Logos that Rocked the World
Logo Rhythm: Band Logos that Rocked the World, by Jim K Davies
Stealing identities is rarely, if ever, a problem in the world of music design. In Logo Rhythm: Band Logos that Rocked the World, the writer Jim K Davies chronicles the origin of some of the most graphically arresting and familiar symbols in popular culture.
Early Blur artwork, from Logo Rhythm
Davies delves into 100 different logos and their origin stories, from tie-ins with name designers through to the work of graphically-inclined band members and artists with a holistic and overarching view of how to present themselves. With band Ts evolving into context-free fashion items, Logo Rhythm is a welcome reminder of the cultural milieu that gave rise to these now-familiar marks.
The Cramps, from Logo Rhythm
1,000 Marks: Pentagram, Angus Hyland, Thames & Hudson, £35, ThamesandHudson.com, Amazon.co.uk
Logo Rhythm: Band Logos that Rocked the World, Jim K Davies, designed by Jamie Ellul, Circa Press, £55, Circa.Press, Amazon.co.uk
David Bowie, from Logo Rhythm
-
Think small, think electric, as Hyundai attempts to revolutionise the classic Indian three-wheelerHyundai’s Micro Mobility strategy, in collaboration with Indian manufacturer TVS, has revealed two conceptual takes on small electric urban transport in a bid to cut the country’s crushing pollution issue
-
‘Just beneath the surface there’s another world’: How David Lynch used hair and make-up to create his singular universeFrom Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive to Twin Peaks, David Lynch used hair and make-up in his films as a narrative device, writes Laura Havlin
-
Burns Night 2025: where to celebrate in LondonIt is time to raise a wee dram to Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns on Burns Night (25 January). Here is our pick of places to enjoy an evening of generous speechmaking, toasting, and drinking around London
-
‘The people who succeed are the ones who are curious’: graphic designer and Honorary RDI Michael BierutNew York-based graphic designer Michael Bierut – Honorary Royal Designer for Industry, Pentagram partner, and the man behind the Mastercard logo – reflects on four decades in design
-
‘Mid-Century Type’ surveys the best graphic design from 1945 to 1965This must-have manual of post-war graphic design tracks the evolution of midcentury visual culture and the people and studios that shaped it
-
A century of all-American toy advertising in picturesA new Taschen book chronicles the 20th-century toy advertising boom in America, recounting how compelling visual storytelling sparked a consumer revolution
-
Beyond belief: a new Charles Saatchi tome reveals advertising’s dark past
