In spite of the plethora of logo books nowadays, good ones are but a handful (there’s a paucity – smallness of number, quantity – of good design books, contrary to what Amazon would let you think). Al Cooper’s World of Logotypes is one of these, first published in 1976, then several years later, now unfortunately out of print (still available here and there, if you’re lucky). It seems that it had 2 or 3 volumes.

The logos are all in black and white, most of them have been replaced or redesigned since then, some just “passed away” together with the corresponding companies. Some of them are easily dated, but most are ageless, strong, showing that those years’ designers where thinking more about what a good logotype is. Not to mention that the majority are designed by grid, something less and less used now in the age of online photo and vector editing software. The book proves once more that good logos don’t need no “web 2.0″ effects. It seems that with the easiness of Photoshop and Illustrator comes great responsability (glows and shadows weren’t exactly easy to ink on the drawing board), or tempting the path to the web 2.0 flashy design it is, as wise Yoda would say :P

Eric Carl kindfully scanned the book (not sure which volume this is or even if it’s the whole book) and posted it on his Flickr. The guys at Logoblink helpfully made a pdf. You’ve got to download it (about 24 MB).

Here are some images as appetizer: