Best branding & logo design books according to redditors

To be fair, that's because they're all designed by the same guy.

- "World Famous" - https://www.amazon.com/World-Famous-Create-Kick-Ass-Brand/dp/1628651555

- Made to Stick - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_to_Stick

- Reinventing Organizations - http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

- Tons of Shopify resources focus on marketing - https://www.shopify.ca/guides

The Swastika has been and always will be a powerful symbol with or without its Nazi association. There is a lot written on the subject and on totalitarian branding in general. Steven Heller is a champion in this area. Check out this brief article by Steven. If you're interested in branding and specifically political branding this is a great book that goes through not only Nazi branding but also the USSR, Musolini's fascist italy and Mao's China. The subject is quite fascinating in regards to the power of the visual language.

Metal logos win by a wide margin when it comes to typography in my book. Check out this book, Lord of the Logos, one of the coolest books I own:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/3899552822/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/175-0864248-5726748

Design is much more a "why" rather than "how" sector.

People here will disagree with me, but they're wrong.

You're designing solely for a client, and it drops into so many things, Target market, competition analysis, colour theory. Especially if you want to go into UX, where the thought behind anything is just as important as the end product. We're problem solvers, we answer questions through design, colour and form.

If you're looking to learn the tools, you also need to learn the thought. The "why" behind the "how".

Being able to do a 5 minute job in illustrator because you know the tools doesn't really matter if you don't know why you're placing things and creating things.


If you're doing tutorials, make sure you're reading.


Logo Design Love

How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things...

A Smile In The Mind

I'd recommend these three, they're primarily logo and branding design books, but the fundamentals that they cover translate into every facet of Visual Communication.

I found the Original on Amazon.

The Bringhurst Bible

James Victore's book is amazing. It's a quick read but is packed with inspiration.

Envisioning Information is great for info design.

Megg's History of Graphic Design


The rest of these I haven't read yet, but here is a list of things I currently have on my amazon wish list:

Some People Can't Surf by Art Chantry

Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design by Jennifer Bass

Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design by Michael Bierut

Damn Good Advice by George Lois

How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy

How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman

The Design of Dissent by Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic

Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State by Steven Heller

I remember really liking the book "logo design love" when I was getting started, though I haven't looked through it in awhile (loaned mine to a friend) to remember exactly what was in it haha. But I remember it having some practical advice in it that was presented in an easily understandable way. (https://smile.amazon.com/Logo-Design-Love-Creating-Identities/dp/0321985206/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=logo+design+book&qid=1568948814&s=gateway&sr=8-1)

Could be worth checking out!

I personally like the Los Logo series of logo books

Yeh there’s just too much going on here. If you have to use an image fill, stick to one i.e. the map or the terrain. This wouldn’t work very well in monochrome either, which isn’t everything but it’s generally a sign of a good, recognisable logo. I recommend reading Logo Design Love, you may find it helpful :)

I absolutely love and recommend the book Logo Design Love by David Airey.

Gonna second this and add in a book on logo design. I like this one for beginners:

http://www.amazon.com/Design-It-Yourself-Logos-Letterheads-Business-Newsletters/dp/1564967689

Then move on to the big one:
http://www.amazon.com/Logo-Design-Love-Creating-Identities/dp/0321985206/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412518028&sr=1-1&keywords=logo+design

You could also use inkscape which is a free vector drawing tool.

Big fan of Logo Design Love by David Airey.

While it's more than you need, the book Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler, covers the essentials of logos and all the different things that go into thinking about one.

It's a great place to start if you're doing any branding work, IMHO.

Logo Design Love

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321985206

Logo Design Love by David Airey

This is a list of books that was suggest to me by John Langdon (An internationally known typographer for his ambigram used in The DaVinci Code) while I was taking his class in College:

Type Directors Club Annuals: I just recently picked up the latest issue of this (32 I believe) and it shows current works of typography across a broad spectrum of mediums. These are great because they feature only current work and many of the featured designs are extremely creative and pushing the envelope in terms of readability and style.

Logo Lounge Master Library Vol. 1: I do not have a copy of this book but I have thumbed through it briefly and it features tons of logos that mainly deal with letter forms. This is certainly on my personal list of books I would like.

Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, Vol. 1: I recently purchased this book as well and I have to say it is a MASSIVE collection of vintage typography and ornaments from type founders all over the world. The majority of the samples in this book are from before the 1900's so you are almost guaranteed to not recognize anything in it. Excellent resource for inspiration!

Logo, Font & Lettering Bible: This is another book on my list. Covers a broad spectrum of lettering and is also good for learning fundementals.

Some other books he has suggested to me but I have not personally look through or read are: Type & Typography, Fonts & Logos, and finally John Langdon's book: Wordplay.

I hope this helps!

Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but this is an excellent book about pizza box designs from around the world:
https://www.amazon.com/Viva-Pizza-The-Art-Box/dp/1612193072

Sixties Design A fun romp through the sixties curvy day glow design bent
Eames: Beautiful DetailsDefinitive Eames Book.
Industrial Design Raymond Loewy My favorite all time designer.
Infrastructure by Brian Hayes Not Sexy, but necessary.
Industrial Design A-Z, Taschen Everything by the letters.
PreFab HousesGood, if dated a little on prefab potential
1000 Chairs Bible of chairs
Things Come Apart They destroyed it beautifully for you
Trespass Street Art photographed and credited
Type Vol. 2 The Taschen site-order version comes with a digital code for Hi-Res digital downloads of each plate. Not sure if the amazon version does. Still worth it either way.
D&AD 11 All the D&AD books are a real tight look at that years best and worst commercial work.
Logo Design 2 I'm sure this has been updated, but good enough and much cheaper now.
DDR Design I have a soft spot for bolshevik propaganda forced into design.
1000 Retail Graphics It is what it says it is, not much more. Good for brainstorming, but not really inspiring.

Let me preface that I don't consider myself a pro in anyway. I work at a printer and am the in-house designer, which for the most part means I am a troubleshooter that needs to fix your damn files so they can print. But I have found these useful for inspiration/education/etc...

Logo Design Workshop

Logo Design Love

The entire Los Logos series. This is volume 7.

The entire LogoLounge series.

Except for the Logo Design Workshop these are primarily catalogs of logos, but some will go through the design process to give you an idea of what the designer was thinking, discussions with client, etc.

Last year I took an "Ethnography of Food" course where we read some really great texts.

A lot of my classmates really enjoyed Around the Tuscan Table by Carole M. Counihan. It centers around various members of a family in Italy and their ideas and traditions when it comes to food, eating, and the cultural issues that surround it, like gender or class.

We also read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, which is a pretty famous book. I found it to be the quickest read and a fascinating page-turner. It's kind of pop-culture-y though and while you could certainly consider it an ethnography, Schlosser is ultimately a journalist, not an anthropologist.

My personal favorite was Home Cooking in the Global Village by Richard Wilk, which is short, only about 200 pages of text, but really well researched and very anthropological. It's a study of the food history of the Central American country Belize, and traces back the reasons for why food in that country is so astoundingly, incredibly bad.

Also!! Let me pimp a book written by one of my most favorite professors. Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network by Ruth Gomberg-Munoz. She's a fantastic writer that I really learned a lot from, and her book is very accessible even if you're not approaching it with a lot of outside knowledge on the subject. She goes into the history behind undocumented labor migration from Mexico to the U.S., its causes and effects, and focuses on the strategies that undocumented workers employ for survival, drawing upon personal experiences and interviews with a core group of informants and their families.

Regardless of my suggestions, hope you find something to love within the world of anthropology, it's really a wonderful discipline.

Honestly practical experience is always going to help more than sitting and attempting to learn specifically the technical side of packaging design.

Try doing briefs that have appeared for competitions such as D&AD awards, YCN Awards or, for something a bit more out there, RSA Awards. Of course these are British and there will be more Australian orientated awards but for practice they are perfect. Also It will give your portfolio a twist and something different to all the other Aussie's.

Finally I would recommend getting a book (one to begin with, don't overwhelm yourself or you will just sack it in) on branding with lots of examples so you can begin to understand what you like and develop your own goal and language. I would recommend 'Visual Identity for Small Businesses'

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Introducing-Visual-Identities-Small-Businesses/dp/3899554116/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407764444&sr=8-1&keywords=visual+identity+for+small+businesses

www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/3899552822
Best book ever for these.

You should definitely get this one: https://www.amazon.com/Logo-Creed-Mystery-Method-Designing/dp/1592538282 :) It sums up pretty well the discovery, development and delivery branding processes.

Christophe Szpajdel also has a book called "Lord of the Logos". It's really awesome and I would recommend it if you're into metal logo designs.

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Know-All-Designers-Expanded/dp/3899555430

This one is fun and handy to keep at your desk. Ofcourse, you could just google questions, but it feels nice to fan through it sometimes.


https://www.amazon.com/Draplin-Design-Co-Pretty-Everything/dp/1419720171

There's a lot of mixed opinions about this one. Some people don't like how he makes logos, others love his 80's inspired, fun branding. Nevertheless, it's great for inspiration.

Edit: The graphic guidelines for NASA and the New York Subway are great and fun for inspiration, grid systems and structure.

Edit 2: I love Pentagram, and luckily there's a book with all their marks. It's called Pentagram: Marks, and It's a great book to keep in your bookshelf.

https://www.amazon.com/Pentagram-Marks-Partners/dp/1856696685

The amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/TM-Untold-Stories-Behind-Classic/dp/1780671652

Logo Design Love

Just buy this book, it's got most of them as well as an incredible history and look at the pizza box industry:

http://www.amazon.com/Viva-Pizza-The-Art-Box/dp/1612193072

There are the books I was recommended:


1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

One thing I think a lot of people don't pay enough attention to when they first start is their branding. You need to establish what your mission and core values are and create a visual identity that conveys that message to people. In my experience the most successful small business ventures start with a great visual identity because it makes them stand out and and build their brand from the start. You want people to have a relationship with your brand so they feel loyal to it.

A good resource for non designers to understand the importance of branding is this book: Building Better Brands: A Comprehensive Guide to Brand Strategy and Identity Development https://www.amazon.com/dp/144033143X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_8lgyxbX04PEHX

Not actually too different from what [Sainsburys own brand stuff] (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2011/nov/07/design-j-sainsbury) looked like the the 70s. There's [a book] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0956356281/) which has more designs but it's currently out of print. I've got a copy and it's surprisingly interesting if you're into design.

The second edition of Logo Design Love by David Airey came out relatively recently. It's great. The first edition was outstanding and I was surprised to see that the second is even better.

Also, Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler is wonderful as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Logo-Design-Love-Creating-Identities/dp/0321985206/ref=zg_bs_3564965011_3

I have this one and it's fantastic. Check the reviews for it, too.

This one will probably be my next purchase on that same theme:

http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Brand-Identity-Essential-Branding/dp/0470401427/ref=zg_bs_3564965011_7

http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Brand-Identity-Essential-Branding/dp/0470401427/ref=pd_sim_b_2

I am reading this right now and it is pretty good. I can't say I've really taken anything mind-blowing away from it though.

Link of the book :

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321985206/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=inkbot05-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0321985206&linkId=b05fbd7ab1b9acec082c4f5f61b362ba

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Iron-Fists-Branding-20th-Century-Totalitarian/dp/071486109X/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=iron+fist+design+of+fascism&qid=1556190874&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull