Trademarks + Corporate Symbols (1991) is a publication by Novum press and is edited by Dieter Urban. The book is one of the many logo books which were published by Novum. There are at least 3 other logo books from this series which will be discussed in the future.
When taking a quick look at this book it is remarkable that it contains little to no information about the editor nor its reason of existence. The short information we get can be found in the foreword where Dieter Urban says that the notable success from the previous editions shows a great interest of designers and ad people in the subject of logo design.
Trademarks + Corporate Symbols contains 320 pages and is divided into regular chapters where logos are classified by letter, word, and pictorial marks. The book also features several logo designers such as Anton Stankowski, Dicken Castro, Bruno K. Wiese and Paul Ibou. However, there are also some very interesting and different chapters in this book showing logos made for schools, a competition for an Italian bank and the development of company signs. The latter shows a brief, but a very nice development of the logos from for example AEG and Shell.
Going through the book, we can notice the typical famous logos and a lot of high quality logos which are less known. Unfortunately, the designer and/or company for which the logos were made aren’t always mentioned. This makes the book not the best book if you are looking for specific information on a certain designer or logo. Apart from that, Trademarks + Corporate Symbols is a beautiful logo book containing a great collection of logos. The content of the book is printed in black which will surely make the hearts of logo purists skip a beat.
