A logo treasure hunt: Who wants to join me?

I want to invite all my designer friends to join me on a treasure hunt to find vintage logo designs that have been long forgotten…

 

A love of vintage identity design

I’ve been a fan of work from graphic design greats such as Paul Rand and Saul Bass for quite some time. Their work is clean, simple and effective… design work from a time when commercial design was at its youth.

Today things are very different. We have better tools, better training, and to some extent, anyone can be a designer… Online there are large volumes of logo design galleries, showcasing vast collections of work from designers around the world…

When comparing the work of now and then, although the artwork today has a greater depth not possible 20+ years ago, they lack something… for me, these galleries are not inspiring. Yes for sure there is some superb work, but it’s a minority, and you need to dig…

Take a look at the homepage of Logo Pond below… these in my eyes are mini illustrations, which are amazing, but they are not timeless logo designs, which should be the aim as a designer.

 

Logo Pond - Design Gallery

 

I’m much more inspired by identity design that is super simple, the style of design work that stands the test of time, and can be seen in the identities of large corporate companies all around us. It’s far superior to the sometimes detailed illustrative style seen in online design galleries. These tiny illustrations are great, but for me, it’s not true identity design – instead it’s much more disposable art. I believe it’s the simple, timeless work that will truly prosper.

Due to this, I like to keep my eyes open for logo design inspiration elsewhere. For example, I have recently ordered myself a second-hand copy of “World of Logotypes” volume 1, which I’m looking forward to arriving. It’s full of logo design from the 70s.

I was lucky to get my copy for only £14, but other copies available go into the hundreds… thankfully, however, someone has scanned it and uploaded it online for anyone to freely download. Below are a couple of page examples to wet your appetite, and hopefully inspire you.

 

World-of-LogoType-Page1 World-of-LogoType-Page2

 

Last week I watched a video with one of my favourite ‘celebrity’ logo designers Aaron Draplin. If you don’t know him, search YouTube and enjoy his design chats, which are full of passion, humour, and the occasional swear word.

In this video, he goes out ‘junking’, out to search for graphic design inspiration at junk stores. Check out the video for yourself below.

 

 

In this video, Draplin makes the statement that he’s on the search for work that has been “eaten up by the wheels of design progress”. Searching for work by graphic designers that were restrained by the techniques and tools available to them.

Whilst watching, I was thinking… wow, I want to do that too!! I’m so excited to see what I can find… what if I found a one-off piece? What if others did this too? How much cool stuff could we all find? What if someone collated everything together in one place? I’d certainly like to see that…

So… I’m going to do it.

 

Join me on a global logo design treasure hunt!

I want a global logo design treasure hunt to happen, so who wants to join me?

Here’s the plan:

  • Go out to your local car boot sale, yard sale, garage, grandparents house… anywhere where you might find awesome old stuff.
  • Keep your eye open for old packaging… anything that might have a cool logo.
  • Once you find it, take a photo (if you can)
  • Send your photo to me by email [email protected], and I’ll collate everything into a blog post, or even its own online gallery if I can get enough people to join in.

Hopefully, others are also excited by the idea, so let me know if you’re planning to join in. If you’re in the Manchester/Wigan area, let me know and we’ll go out treasure hunting together!

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