Design Tips: Logo Inspiration

Malcom Grear

Excerpted from “Inside / Outside: From the Basics to the Practice of Design, Second Edition.” Published by New Riders.
Malcom Grear sees a logo as “a simple tool, like a hammer; it has a straightforward function. Anything that gets in the way of that function weakens the effectiveness of the tool. Keep it simple. Same for symbols. Simplicity, clarity, elegance. And by elegance I mean the sort of form that a wide diversity of viewers will find visually active and easily remembered. Being memorable matters a lot. If the form is ornate, it can’t stick in memory. Simple and ugly is easy; simple and boring is easy; simple and vague is also easy.”

This symbol is for the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which is devoted to the history of the American whaling industry, when sailing ships dominated merchant trade and whaling. It is strong, simple, and memorable.
In this article, Grear explores how to achieve that “simple result, a hammer that hammers, a symbol that symbolizes.” To read the article as a PDF file in your Web browser, click “Simplicity.” You can also download the PDF to your machine for later viewing.
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Excerpted from Inside / Outside: From the Basics to the Practice of Design, Second Edition by Malcolm Grear. Copyright © 2006. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and New Riders.