“Trademarks & Symbols of The World”, a very known book title in the graphic design world carried by so many books. Some books carry a derivative of this title which doesn’t make it always easy to know which one you should pick. Fortunately, there is a standard that we can trust blindly. A standard called: Yasaburo Kuwayama.
Yasaburo Kuwayama is probably one of the most famous logo book designer of all times. His books are stunningly good and probably listed on a lot of designers their wanted list because of the iconic aura that’s floating around these books and because of their rarity.
Trademarks & Symbols of The World. Volume 1: The Alphabet in Design and Volume 2: Design Elements belong to this list of highly wanted books as well. As they’re not accessible that easily, this review will please everyone who’s never been able to get their hands on these books.
These pocket sized books are true logo galleries. You get one logo after the other, a continuous flood of logo greatness. Since these books were published in 1988, most of the features logos have that bold, powerfull and straightforward feel which was very common during those years. The entire book, except for the cover, is of course printed in black as how it was done back in the days and how the best logo books always are, right?
Besides the beautiful content of the book, the covers of both of these books are very noteworthy as well. As on previous books from Yasaburo Kuwayama, we can recognize a pattern on the layout of the covers. Bold title on top, subtitle and name of the author right beneath that, followed by a representation of some of the featured logos in the book. An attractive and successful layout that was applied several times on the books from Kuwayama.
Due to the success of the original Trademarks & Symbols of the World books, Kuwayama used them and created excerpts of the book made Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the Trademarks & Symbols of the World books. The originals were used to create the smaller soft cover publications and are thus excerpts of the original. Volume 1 and 2 therefore don’t bring anything new compared to the original, but that doesn’t make the soft covers less desired.
Long story short, these two books from Yasaburo Kuwayama are, yet again, magnificent logo book publications. Owning these books is definitely a privilege, but don’t eat your heart out if you don’t. Seeing in what condition these books find themselves will hurt your heart even more than not owning them. More of that can be seen in the video review here below.
