LogoArchive #5

LogoArchive #5 is available now on loremnotipsum.com. LogoArchive returns with Issue 5 – Technique. The technical limitations of the mid-century—the need for a steady hand and a precise mind for mechanical reproduction—demanded that an exceptional level of care and creativity be given over to shape and space, association and perception. These considerations created a rich corporate and consumer form language and range of graphic techniques. These have been partly marginalised, usurped by modern print and display technologies. They do remain as useful reference points in which to help create an effective symbol today, one that works well in a black or white, can be used with vibrant inks, seductive materials and eye-catching finishes as well as being displayed in motion on ever more diverse screens types.

LogoArchive Issue 5 focuses on eleven simple techniques, naming them, exemplifying them and offering short commentaries. It serves as an archival and pedagogical document, offering an alternative take on the ubiquitous logo tips article. In this way it looks at things another way around. This alternate viewpoint manifests itself materially in the dual modes of reading the zine, either portrait and symbol first, or landscape text first. By presenting these texts in a landscape format, the zine encourages its readers to embrace the full materiality of what began as a digital Instagram project, and view the symbols documented in different ways, to see how their form language is diminished or enhanced.

LogoArchive is marked by its conceptual and philosophical foundations but also its graphic immediacy, an interplay between the visual language of archival and children’s storybooks, as well as its materiality and production. These reflect the pragmatism of documentation and the metaphorical play present in some of the logos, and LogoArchive’s digital origins as an Instagram account and its new material manifestation. LogoArchive is founded on an enthusiasm for a well-crafted logo; a convivial metaphor, a communicative immediacy and smart use of form language. However, in print, it was never conceived as a document with a singular intention; the simple documentation of logos, rather a delivery mode in which to build a story and share thoughts. A conversation on Twitter; digital dialogue lost in the passage of time but forever coded into the electronic aether, is materialised as ink on paper and written into the story and ongoing development of the zine. This sits alongside an anthropological text; a musing on the distinctive qualities of the human eye.

Details: LogoArchive #5

Design: Richard Baird / LogoArchive
Publisher: BP&O
Size: 148 x 210 mm
Pages: 18
Binding: Stapled booklet