Wordmarks, logos and everything in between

A handsomely produced book of some distinctive brand identities created by Chermayeff & Geismar. Some of them must have entered the public consciousness by now: NBC (the peacock) PBS; Chase Manhattan; Mobil; Pan Am; Xerox (before the current one) National Geographic. Others have only been seen within certain industries or outside the US. There are several logos for the Turkish Koc Holdings.

The book, though, was rather disappointing for me because it's not much more than a portfolio of C&G work rather than a visual account of how each design was created. There is some quite detailed text on some of these marks which does in fact sum up the thinking behind the visual but I was expecting to see various roughs and scribbled ideas that created the final design. This does occur in a few but most pages show previous marks on a left-hand page with the logo centered on all the right-hand pages. Also missing is any explanation of why a particular typeface was chosen for those designs that are just typographic.

The pages really should have delivered more and I see that copies can be picked quite cheaply since publication in 2011. Worth getting maybe just to see these logos well printed and in a reasonable size.