Now see where great logos, symbols and icons come from. If you want to understand what makes them "tick"--what makes them good--then look here. This is not your typical collection of neat-and-polished, finished designs. This book steps into the international studios of top designers as ideas happen--to show you what worked, what didn't, and why. You'll even get an up-close and personal look at the making of symbols and icons--two fast-growing, but rarely covered, fields of design.

Inside, case studies illustrate the evolution of logos, symbols and icons created for a variety of clients, from small, start-up businesses to large corporations. You'll get the whole creative story--from the initial client briefing ... through early roughs and intermediary sketches ... to the ultimate, finished design. Don't miss this rare, real-world look at how designers sum up a business or a product in a single, graphic signature.

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Filled with vibrant ads that playfully use art-history icons--such as da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Michelangelo's David, Botticelli's Venus, and Warhol's soup cans--as well as rarely seen commissioned art from masters such as Willem de Kooning, Jacob Lawrence, and Rene Magritte, Hoffman shows how the boundaries between fine art and advertising have disappeared. In fact, today's cutting-edge artists, such as Damien Hirst, Barbara Kruger, and Jeff Koons, are all part of the ad game.

Seasoning each provocative chapter ("The High Art of Class Lust," "Pop Goes the Easel," "The Greatest Degeneration") with wry observations from art world personalities and advertising luminaries, Hoffman shows us how narrow the gap between art and advertising really is.

So if you like art (even though you don't follow it closely), and advertising (even while you hate the fact that you can't escape it), the irreverent, irrepressible, irresistibly ironic Barry Hoffman gives you Both for the Price of One.

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