This is Michael Bierut. "I'm Michael Beirut. I'm a graphic designer".
You might be familiar with his work, but interestingly he thinks that logos are just kind of overrated. " I'm actually often very ambivalent about them."
Let's back out a second. What is a logo? Basically the face of a company.
" Some are beloved. Some. . . the swastika is a logo and it's reviled. You know" ?
They have to work at tiny sizes, and huge.
There are three specific types. First type is the WORDMARK.
" The wordmark is the easiest one. And it's the one we're all the most familiar with. I mean John Hancock's signature is kind of a word mark. It can look crisp clean and modern like the new Google logo looks. Or it can look somehow that it has roots in a shared heritage the way the coca cola logo looks. You know" ?
The second is PICTORAL.
" Pictoral logos often function as a kind of rebus, you know. It's a picture, and you savor what's in the picture, and it sort of is identifying the name of the company. Sometimes directly like Target. Sometimes more indirectly like LaCoste" .
The third kind is kind of the holy grail. Abstract inconography.
