Best bar none
Yesterday, we posted up a piece about logo design, pointing out one of our favourites was for The Mill designed by North in 1999.
After we posted up the blog entry we were told by someone* how the Mill logo had been inspired by one designed by Muriel Cooper in 1963 for MIT Press.
We’d never seen this before but it’s quite clear to see the similarities between the two.
But it’s the way the letterforms of the Mill logo naturally make the shape of a mill, that still earns it a place in our ‘favourite logos list’. Though we read in Michael Evamy’s ‘Logo’ book that the bars actually represented strips of film. There’s no mention of it being the shape of a building.
Using bars to make letterforms doesn’t just stop at these two though. The Mill logo may or may not have been directly influenced by the MIT Press’s, but we’re sure others have been influenced by these two.
Here are a few more logos that bear more than a passing resemblance to them:
Manpower moved the bars idea on slightly by rounding and angling them.
In 2003 Tim Blackburn and Matthew Carter redesigned the identity for The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The institute shares MIT Press’s initials but incorporats a horizontal bar and the dot of the ‘i’ to make their logotype more legible.
This logo for piano technician Mika Ohtsuki was designed by Emmi in 2005. The bars represent piano keys this time (the second bar is an out of tune key), as well as being Mika’s initials.
The piano key theme also works for Matt & Phreds Jazz Club just around the corner from our studio.
And last but not least, Spin’s nice logo for the Haunch of Venison galleries. The letterforms take on an even more abstract appearance here.
We don’t really care who did what when, or who copied who, because we think they all have individual merit. What’s interesting to us is that as a collective, the letters start to form a new, simplistic typeface. And if the bars were made into a typeface, who would blame a designer for using it, even if someone else might have already? After all, how many logos use Helvetica?
Takashi Okamoto from the MIT Media Lab thought the style would make an interesting font too, and he’s made a type sampler based on the original MIT Press logo. You can play with it here.
*We had a go, and wrote the name of the person who tipped us off about the MIT Press logo.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 15:36
Reader Comments (5)
Very nice article!
Don't forget the infamous black flag logo
See also The Filter's logo: http://thefilter.com
I couldn't help but be reminded of the logo for the early 80s California punk band "Black Flag" (designed by Raymond Pettibon) when viewing these solid bar logos.
Bah, didn't catch the above post regarding the same logo. My apologies!