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Any professional designer probably has a few logo books handy for reference and from my experience they can be divided into two types: those that are just full of dull, unimaginative marks that show no signs of creativity (and with current software it's so easy to churn them out) and those, like this book, that reveal well thought out designs that have stood the test of time.

The author has devised a simple, straightforward layout for the hundred companies, mostly American or European. Each starts on a left-hand page with a few hundred words about their history and specific details regarding the logo and changes over the years. The right-hand page shows how the logo has changed over time with several historical examples and nicely these are dated and frequently the designer or design company is named. Many of the designs run over onto the next spread with graphics of them in use.

The book is a handy size (check out the Product Details above) well printed though it does have the quirk of the Contents spread printed on yellow paper with white numbers next to the black company names. The white is unreadable in a domestic lighting environment.

The perfect complement to Logo Life is Taschen's Logo Book, a thick, chunky title with six thousand logos all in color on 776 pages.

Logo Life: Life Histories of 100 Famous Logos is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)