Book Review: I Heart Logos

I Heart Logos is a new 240 page logo collection book and the culmination of a years worth of logo submissions to their website from designers all over the world.

A compact book 203mm x 126mm in size with a limited run of a 1000 copies contains around 460 logos presented in order of community votes.

I Heart Logos Season One is described on their website as

“…a design competition – the only one of its kind. You [the designers] are the judge here. So is everyone else. When you submit a logo, you let the entire design community decide its fate. In return, you get the right to judge everyone else’s work.

That means when the ever-so-coveted book of winners is published, the winning logos will have been selected by the entire design world. Not some “famous” judge. The award for winning this logo design competition is paid in the highest form of currency – respect.

Your reputation won’t precede you here. The voting community won’t know what design firm, ad agency, or designer is responsible for the work. That’s intentional. Logos here have to stand on their own merit.”

I must confess a number of my logos did feature in this publication and although I’m delighted to have these included I will try to keep a balanced review.

The layout of the book provides ample space for each design with two per page, ordered by community ‘votes’. There are no catagories so there is a sense of randomness, with the work going from exceptional to average as you progress through the book (it’s subjective so there a few gems later on that I feel the community overlooked). The only real problem is the lack of information on each logo, most notably industry (this would add a much needed relevance to each piece), the top ten do feature a small introduction but these seemed to be inconsistent due to them being written by the designers themselves.

I must also draw attention to the limited print run, this book (at 1000 copies) is likely to only reach other contributors and unlikely to become a resource for potential clients looking for designers. It’s essentially a vanity piece but one that provides contributing designers with a small measure of their ability, it provides an opportunity to see where they are and how they can improve.

In conclusion this compact book does contain some very inspiring pieces of design work albiet in a random nature, it’s limited run my only lead to it being an inspiration book rather than an opportunity for designers to showcase their work to potential clients or adorn the coffee table of big agencies. At $25.00 it certainly does have a very affordable price tag and would recommend it (should there be any left).

Submissions for Season Two have begun with it’s publication due in October if you would like to take part head over to I heart Logos