Designing Pictorial Symbols

by Nigel Holmes, Rose DeNeve

Looks at the origins and history of pictorial symbols, describes how fifty-four news-related symbols were created for Time magazine, and discusses design considerations

Genres: Design

160 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Michael Huen]

The book is quite dated and a lot of the designs show its age. But for the most part it's a good book about the process of designing symbols for mostly TIME magazine. There are a lot of sketches with the designer telling how he came to each iteration. Holmes admits to his failures as much as his successes. Note that there are more unsuccessful designs than timeless ones. I'd still recommend for the focus on process.

[KMT]

Dated (as most symbols are for news events from the 1980s) but interesting overall even if I was expecting more practical guidelines about actually designing symbols: things like composition, balance, colour schemes... We get this a little bit in the last part when the author presents symbols from other designers, but not really anywhere else.

[Manuel Frias]

It was interesting to learn about the design process of icons in the pre-computer era. Surprisingly, it hasn’t changed much since many designers still start with pen and paper.

Even more intriguing, it was a reminder of the turbulent 80s, marked with wars, invasions, and crisis in the Cold War years.