We enjoy meeting new and fresh talented designers, however consistently in the Middle East we met designers, freelancers, whose laptop messenger bags are brimmed with publications of (logo) identity design, superbrands or in reality super-blands at times.
At James we strongly believe that any designer’s personal books should be highly inspiring reading, educational, informative, fresh and a new journey of thinking reflecting how they think and work. Our view of collections of publications such as design identities, marks, logo’s a regional book on Superbrands (really pleased!) this really only make you a collective serial book owner, with very limited resource, not necessarily a skilled designer, whom should be inspired to be solving companies positions, visual manifestations, thinking for one’s self in a more strategic direction.
More recently a large publication growth in the last few years or lets say trend, is for so called organizations such as subjectively Superbrands, and Logo lounge, to print and influence the design publication market with at times some very mediocre workings. Of course these publications do carry some global giants and merit in a small quantity, however the majority of these publications carry abstract trends and poor thinking, with little insight to branding design. Meanwhile creaming in hundreds of thousands of dollars with book publications to designers and wannabe practitioners with so called awards ceremonies, from selected by a team of so called design experts? At times these publications are the catalyst of disintegration to strategic brand thinking and design skill than lifting educational levels, in the Middle East region.
In reality if design is part solution solving, designers would be far more interested to read what positioning changed for the firms in these publications, was income generation improved, was brand extension, new markets formed, did these marks, (logos ) bring more empathy to the consumers.
We thought we would share with you the recent publication of logo lounge, trends in logo design as they fondly describe.. Its highly subjective however you wont certainly find it in the Atelier James book shelf, if you’re a young student or young graduate – buy a book on Paul Rand or Raymond Loewy, we are absolutely certain you will find it far more inspiring and insightful even today.
Bill Gardner of Logolounge.com, picks out this year’s major trends in logo design from the 35,000 new marks on his site.
