{"id":3885,"date":"2015-04-01T14:24:19","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T14:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/startwp.logomaker.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/01\/michael-bierut-on-logo-design\/"},"modified":"2024-03-07T16:09:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T16:09:57","slug":"michael-bierut-on-logo-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/startwp.logomaker.com\/blog\/michael-bierut-on-logo-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Bierut on Logo Design"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-7586\" src=\"https:\/\/startwp.logomaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Michael-Bierut.jpg\" alt=\"Michael Bierut\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" \/>Earlier this week we came across this video of award-winning graphic designer Michael Bierut talking about design and specifically the power of logos. Beirut is a partner at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pentagram.com\/partners\/#\/20\/\">Pentagram<\/a>\u2014a design powerhouse\u2014and the winner of more than 100 awards for his work. He knows his stuff when it comes to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.logomaker.com\">logo design<\/a>. Here&#8217;s what he has to say in the video (emphasis added by us):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI don\u2019t want to over emphasize logos in the world. I think that, basically, if you act with intelligence and integrity and consistency, you\u2019ll develop a brand\u2014whether you\u2019re a person, or a non-profit institution, a small organization, a giant corporation.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s fun about logo design, what makes it so interesting, what makes it hold so much power for all of us, I think, is two things. One is that there is something very primitive about it, right? I mean, many of them are just such simple marks. They are not farther evolved much than hieroglyphics, or marks on cave walls from millions of years ago.<\/p>\n<p>And what happens, too, what makes it interesting is that they get invested with meaning. If you take something like the Nike swoosh or the Target target or any symbol that represents a big company, <em><strong>a lot of what we see when we look at that logo isn\u2019t really happening in the logo. It\u00a0happens in our own mind<\/strong><\/em>&#8230; it\u2019s inherently participatory, it\u2019s inherently interactive. <em><strong>You\u2019re taking all the experience you\u2019ve had with that product or with that institution or with whoever that symbol represents and you\u2019re imposing it\u00a0on to very simple shapes that really have no inherent meaning at all.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s a delicate thing to manipulate\u2014very hard to talk about with clients sometimes because it\u2019s confusing. They\u2019ll want a new logo, then you show them the logo, and they say it doesn\u2019t mean anything. I want a logo like Nike\u2019s. But the Nike guys, when they were shown that logo, they wanted an Adidas logo, that\u2019s what they wanted. They wanted three stripes, and\u00a0instead they couldn\u2019t have three stripes because another shoe already has three stripes. Here\u2019s something you can have, it\u2019s this thing that looks like a chubby check mark.<\/p>\n<p>Now people think it means something. <em><strong>It didn\u2019t really mean anything then, except what it came to mean because of everything that Nike did to support it. Not just the advertising, but the experience you or I or anyone else has had wearing those shoes, doing something athletic and taking some satisfaction out of it and coming to associate it in some vague way with that particular brand.<\/strong><\/em> So there is a kind of magic and a kind of joy in it that make it fun.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We love the way he describes the process of logos coming to mean something over time, rather than being infused with meaning at the moment a designer conceives it. While a logo design can hint or suggest an idea (for example, an eagle icon might suggest soaring, flight, or even America; while blurred lines might suggest speed or distance), logos take their meaning as they are associated with a product or company and customers have experiences with the brand. Well said, Mr. Bierut.<\/p>\n<p>And you can see a sample of Mr. Bierut\u2019s work in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.designboom.com\/design\/michael-bierut-interview\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"(Opens a new window)\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this interview conducted by DesignBoom<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week we came across this video of award-winning graphic designer Michael Bierut talking about design and specifically the power of logos. Beirut is a partner at Pentagram\u2014a design powerhouse\u2014and the winner of more than 100 awards for his work. He knows his stuff when it comes to logo design. Here&#8217;s what he has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":3878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-logo-design-basics"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Michael Bierut on Logo Design | LogoMaker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Award-winning graphic designers Michael Beirut talks about logo design and how icons take on meaning after they are associated with brand experiences.||Award-winning graphic designers Michael Beirut talks about logo design and how icons take on meaning after they are associated with brand experiences.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, 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