Logo Design Love Book Review Plus Giveaway
This is a somewhat belated review of one of my favourite design books published in the last 12 months, Logo Design Love: a guide to creating iconic brand identities, by David Airey.
I first purchased my copy of Logo Design Love back in January, however given that I have just read it for a second time I thought this was the perfect opportunity to post a brief review.
Giveaway: We are also giving away a brand new copy of Logo Design Love for free to one lucky reader. Please see the bottom of this post for details on how to enter.
David Airey, the man
If you are a reader of design blogs, it is fairly likely that you would be familiar with David Airey. If not, David is a brand identity designer based in Edinburgh, Scotland who runs two highly successful design blogs – davidairey.com and logodesignlove. David has been blogging about graphic design since way back in 2006. Both of his blogs are packed full of interesting articles and valuable resources mainly with a focus on brand identity design.
Apart from being an excellent blogger, personally I have always found David to be an all-round good guy – you can follow him on Twitter at David Airey and/or LogoDesignLove.
You can also check out an interview I did with David a few months back as part of our Logo Designer Interviews series.
Logo Design Love, the book
Now, onto the book.
The first thing you’ll notice when you pick up the book is that it seems quite short – 203 pages to be exact. The difference between this book and many other logo design books in my bookshelf is that Logo Design Love is absolutely packed full of useful information. Just a personal observation, but many of the other logo design books I have purchased in the past have been more style than substance. That is definitely not the case here.
The book starts off with a look at the importance of brand identity and reinforces the basic principles behind creating an iconic logo. David backs up his points by providing excellent real-life examples, which really help to bring his points across. Logo designs should be simple, relevant, incorporate tradition, distinctive, memorable, scalable and have a focus on one element. All fair and relevant points.
The second part of the book is dedicated to the process of designing effective logos. A large part of this section is dedicated to how to deal with and manage clients and draws on many of David’s personal experiences. If you have ever had problems with setting client expectations or negotiating pricing, as many of us do, you will find this section particularly useful.
The book then goes on to discuss some great techniques to conceptualise a logo. Chapter 7, “from pencil to PDF”, discusses the benefits of sketching and mind-mapping as a method for exploring design directions. Mind-mapping is a technique I have really gotten into heavily myself after seeing how effectively David uses it in his many logo design process posts on his blog. Here is an example of one of his latest logo process posts for goTeach.
Part three, the final section of the book, focuses on how to stay motivated and manage your life as a designer. Some of my favourite points from this section are “balance your life”, “show relentless desire”, and “improve how you communicate”. Simple, but often forgotten advice.
The book concludes with an excellent Q&A section answering some common questions asked by readers of David’s blogs over the years. Topics include: rights of use, online portfolio creation, and how many concepts to show a client.
Conclusion
As you can no doubt tell by now, I highly recommend Logo Design Love. It is a book that I constantly refer back either to reaffirm my own thoughts, or to pick up a tip on how to deal with a particular situation.
Logo Design Love is a well-thought out and comprehensive overview of brand identity design.
You can pick up your copy of Logo Design Love on Amazon.com
Don’t just take my word for it
Here are a list of Logo Design Love reviews that may or may not be better than this one.
Logo Design Love Book Review – The Design Cubicle
Book review: Logo Design Love by David Airey – Noisy Decent Graphics
Book Review: Logo Design Love – Web Designer Depot
Book Review: Logo Design Love – My Ink Blog
Logo Design Love by David Airey – Book Review and Photos – Imjustcreative
Logo Design Love Book Giveaway
We are giving away a brand new copy of Logo Design Love to one lucky reader. To enter the giveaway you have 3 options:
- Leave a good comment below
- Follow us on Twitter and retweet this post
- ‘Like’ our Facebook page
If you do all three, that is three entries. It’s as simple as that.
Update 22/07/2010: Winner to be announced on 30 July 2010.
Update 30/07/2010: Winner announced.
Congratulations Velinda (@velann3), you are the winner of our Logo Design Love book giveaway. Huge thanks to everyone who entered!