Long time no blog, huh?? I thought to share some books on my shelf that others may find of interest for design reference and inspiration. The book I picked out today is Modern Heraldry VOL. 1 Seals Stamps Crests & Shields (2015) published by Counter Print. This blog entry isn’t an endorsement of the publisher, rather it’s my desire to point others to useful printed references in place of using the internet for the majority of gathering material to spark projects and the imagination.
I won’t be ‘reviewing’ the book here; I don’t feel the need to. All I can say is it feels good to have on the bookshelf. You never know when such a thing will come in handy. (Even for rendering fictitious logo designs for movie or stage prop design, or environment/background illustration.)
The book is akin to a visual dictionary. The language of design in dense, and this books sorts the best of the best modern symbolic logo designs into easily referenced sections of shields, seals, crests, flags & ribbons, and laurels. It’s a very pleasant book to page through.
The blurb states: “Modern Heraldry is a comprehensive and profusely illustrated guide to more than 350 trademarks, based in heraldic symbology, from all over the world.” Indeed, the book is an eye-opener to overseas logo design that otherwise would go unnoticed to me. It’s always a treat to see how other countries navigate design ‘trends’, and what design rules their work adheres to. The world is far more connected now than the previous century, so it’s reassuring to see vastly different takes on say, a café logo from different countries. (Of course the intended market audience and the quality of the product or service sold effects the image and logo even within the same country.)
I hope you can enjoy the few images that I’ve shared here. At some point, I’ll show some of the second volume of Modern Heraldry. I’ve a small number of other books by the same publisher, but I do own some interesting and equally specific graphic design books that I would like to share here. A previous graphic design book I covered on my blog would be Logos from Japan. It’s a fascinating insight into foreign logo and symbol design.
DESIGN WORKS 