saul bass's logo designs

it's often said that the mark of a good design consists in its endurance. 

well, here take a look at how bass' designs have changed during the years: very little!

Shigeo Fukuda (Japan)

Design is 30 percent dignity, 20 percent beauty and 50 percent absurdity.

what do we have here?

*emotion,

*intuition,

*illusion, 

Chermayeff & Geismar's LOGO Portfolio

Mobil

NBC

Chase


Chesmayer and Geismar's Web

"logo means integrity, honesty, simplicity & clarity", master logo designer Paul Rand

Rand brought avant-garde European ideas to the United-States, mixing visual arts and commercial design. His colorful combinations, approach of typography and use of media translate his desire to "defamiliarize the ordinary". His style consequently still have an impact on graphic design today. Rand's art achieved its full maturity in the 1950s, which coincided with a dynamism in the New York art scene, inspired by European abstract art. 

SO what do we get here? 

1. European modernism.

2. Abstraction, asymmetry, 

3. Dynamism in typographical and pictorial composition

check this site of Rand's best logos.

Advertising!

1- Advertising uses techniques and practices to bring products, services, opinions, even causes to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in certain ways. 

2- Advertising is late-Capitalism's most important source of income for the media (e.g., traditional or social).

3- The most basic media for advertising are: (a) Newspapers (offers large circulations, a readership located close to the advertiser's place of business, and the opportunity to alter content on a frequent and regular basis), (b) Magazines (of general interest, aimed at specific audiences), (c) TV and radio. (d) Social Media. 

4- Advertising will be effective if its production -and placement- is based on a knowledge of its target, plus a skilled use of the media. The marketing side of advertising employs publicity to achieve its aim. 

5- There's no question that advertising is a powerful way to inform consumers. In a free-market economy, effective advertising is essential to a company’s survival, for unless consumers know about a company's product, they are unlikely to buy it. 

6- Then, comes the counter/advertising issues: 
a) undue influence, 
b) false advertising, 
c) deceptive techniques such as concealment of facts, exaggeration, etc.

A brief analysis of propaganda

1- Propaganda means agitation. Elaborating upon Lenin's pamphlet What Is To Be Done? Marxist Georgy Plekhanov defined propaganda as the use of slogans, parables, and half-truths to exploit the grievances of the uneducated and the unreasonable. He regarded both strategies as absolutely essential to political victory and twinned them in the term agitprop.

2- This is how Joseph Goebbels (Hitler's minister of Propaganda) puts it:

Political propaganda in principle is active and revolutionary. It is aimed at the broad masses. It speaks the language of the people because it wants to be understood by the people. Its task is the highest creative art of putting sometimes complicated events and facts in a way simple enough to be understood by the man on the street. 

3- Propaganda tries to manipulate people's beliefs, attitudes, or actions by means of symbols: Words, gestures, banners, monuments, music, clothing, insignia, hairstyles, designs on coins and postage stamps, and so forth.

4- Contemporary propaganda uses social-scientific research facilities to conduct opinion surveys and psychological interviews in efforts to learn the symbolic meanings of its message. 

Alvin Lustig

Alvin Lustig (1915-1955) incorporated his vision and private symbols into graphic design. He alternated between architecture, graphic design and interior design. At age twenty-one he began a graphic design and printing business in the rear of a Los Angeles drugstore. 

what do we see here?

1- soft geometric abstraction,
2- the essence of 1950s design,
3- the symbol captures the essence of the content
4- form and content are one,
5- "a smart design separates truly creative people from the less imaginative."

alvin lustig web site.

advertisers learned from imitating the comic pages, the confession magazines, and radio, that people respond to the quick cutting from scene to scene, close-ups, personal testimonials, and intimate drama. the comic strip was especially interesting to them since it showed how the consumer could be led to a sale one step at a time in an almost hypnotic trance

summarizing post-war rhetoric of consumability

What do we have so far? 

*Graphic design contributed to a culture of consumption and modernism became a consumable idea, as once-experimental forms were popularized through style trends.

 
*Graphic designers were increasingly involved in creating lifestyle fantasies that were not inherently connected to the goods and services they sold.

 
* Brand identities not only lent an appearance of difference to similar products but also became commodities themselves, demonstrating that a designed concept was a marketable one.

 
*Art directors, commercial artists and layout designers began to see the value and professional organizations and trade publications that highlighted their respective roles and promoted their field as a whole.

continental paid $500,000 to saul bass for their logo in the early 1960s!

that's saul bass logo for continental

Bill Golden's CBS famous logo (1951) starts with a hex

The story goes that as he drove through Pennsylvania Dutch country, Bill Golden became intrigued by the hex symbols resembling the human eye that are drawn on Shaker barns to ward off evil spirits.

Check the CBS logo before the "eye." 

What is in a LOGO?

A logo represents a company's personality and worth.

Logos are carefully designed and vary from product to product. 

Logo masters point to four key image elements:

1- Veracity, 
2- Worth, 
3- Management, 
4- Novelty, 
5- Permanence,

FORTUNE MAGAZINE & the beginning of logo identity

fortune catered to corporations,

the idea was to present a message on data processing, industries, development, progress, future,

 
the aesthetics of fortune reinforced the tendency to abstract the narrative into a single message that was able to congeal all the different notes with a new corporate language.

the language of corporate capitalism,

it worked!

George Giusti & the pre LOGO

George Giusti's major achievement was the design of Magazine Covers. 

See how he mixes a diagrammatic language of information graphics with an iconography of recognizable objects.

What do we get?

*Giusti works almost exclusively in tempera. Then comes the airbrush but with considerable reserve. 

*He's careful not to lose the distinction of his own incisive brush-line. 

*The design is carried as far as possible with the sable brush, then applies the airbrush where needed for soft gradations and very smooth tones. 

Giusti's work for Fortune is elegant and smooth:

and this,

Giusti's secret: Technology is in the air, weightless. Technology is the expression of scientific endeavor!   

what is "meta-design"? take a look at anton stankowski

anton stankowski's representations of the visible (and the invisible) processes crossed into the realm of abstraction to devise a unique graphic language that was specific enough to communicate meaningful relationships,

among largely non-figurative elements.

for the fist time, geometry spoke the language of dynamics and abstract action.

this is where stankowski broke new ground with the idea of metadesign, i.e.,

design about design.

his set of generalized elements was effective in narrating process, rather than things.

don't you wish you came up with the idea?

"ideogram" or the reverse engineering of the logo

it all begins here:

egyptians used iconography as language. a sign has a "echoy" meaning.

it come down to us like this:

three elements here:

square box,
CBS,
the concentric eye and
TV reception (the antenna is upside-down).

forms of dada collage (graphic design where the making is as automatic as the product)

cubomania is a collage in which pictures or images are cut into squares and the squares are then reassembled without regard for the image, at random.

decoupage. one cuts up smaller images or portions at random, and rearranges them to create a new image or text. The cut ups are used to offer a non-linear alternative to traditional reading and writing. Dali used a lot of decoupage in his early work.

décalcomanie. a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to pottery or other materials. 

World War II propaganda 2 (our side)

Ben Shahn, 1942, Printed for the Office of War Information

Thomas Hart Benton, 1942, NARA Picture Branch

Produced by Winchester, NARA Picture Branch

Amos Sewell, 1945

By Siebel, 1942

Victor Keppler, 1944

Howard Miller, 1943, Westinghouse for the War Production

RCA Manufacturing Company

Norman Rockwell, 1943

what's the message here?

persuade the public with communication tools. if we call it propaganda, it's still soft propaganda in the sense that it lacks the concerted push of the state apparatus.