Los Logos Review

Los Logos is a 400-page showcase of modern logo design. With very little commentary, it’s a great book to flip through to see 3,500 examples of contemporary logos. To collect the logos, the authors invited designers to submit their work. The collection is divided into Logos, Lettering, Typograms, Combinations and Collected Themes, and ends with some logo statistics. Want more? Dos Logos and Tres Logos are also available.

The first section of Los Logos is appropriately named “logos.” It focuses on the classic sign or symbol used to represent a brand, though as the writers state themselves they are hardly “classic.” Divided into iconographic, illustrative, pictographic and ideographic logos, this section is an interesting look at literal symbols, such as the Swiss army knife labeled “Switzerland” to abstract ones, most of which cannot be described in writing. I did enjoy, however, the Atari-style “Gizmo”, “Ghoul”, “Guardian” and “Ghost.”

In the “lettering” section of Los Logos, logos consisting of only type are presented. This by no means makes it a dull chapter… scores of clever uses of type are found here, the largest section of the book. The section is divided into type as type, type as a brand, pictorial type, type as pictures and Asian type. This section truly provides typographic inspiration. In the following section, “typograms,” more type treatments are looked at with a focus on initials or single letters rather than full words.

In “combinations,” Los Logos presents the symbols paired with lettering. This section is conveniently divided into horizontal, vertical, centered and asymmetric combinations. It provides a great source of ideas for combining a company name with a corresponding symbol.

In “collected themes,” logos are grouped together by topic. While the rest of Los Logos sometimes groups similar styles together, the themes section features pages such as “faces,” “skulls” and “hearts.” I especially enjoyed this section and wouldn’t mind a whole book presented with this level of categorization. Overall, Los Logos is an extensive look at modern logo design, and a great book to go back to again and again for design inspiration.