1 Best Useful Design Resources You Will Ever Need

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I’ve searched my bookmarks and gathered your top tips, culminating in this selection of sites, books, articles and designers.

Type foundries

• Hoefler & Frere-Jones, H&FJ works with brand leaders in every sector, developing original typefaces and licensing fonts from its library of nearly 1,000 designs
• Porchez Typofonderie, an independent digital type foundry in France, designing, manufacturing and selling high quality typefaces
• OurType, founded in 2002, OurType is managed by three partners: Fred Smeijers, Corina Cotorobai and Rudy Geeraerts
• Village, the union of eleven young type foundries who have decided to go it alone, together
• P22, creates computer typefaces inspired by art, history, and sometimes science
• FontShop, around for 16 years, since the dawn of digital type
• Process Type Foundry, from a studio in Golden Valley, Minnesota
• Colophon, set-up by Brighton-based studio Entente
• Type foundries worth a look, a slightly larger resource, with commentator recommendations, too

Books

• Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities — get a free chapter from my book
• Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team by Alina Wheeler
• Symbol by Angus Hyland and Steven Bateman
• Logo by Michael Evamy
• Decoding Design by Maggie Macnab
• Marks of Excellence by Per Mollerup
• LogoLounge 4 // LogoLounge 3 // LogoLounge 2 // LogoLounge
• Tres Logos // Dos Logos // Los Logos

Catch a few more recommended reads here: A few good books.

Logo history

• History of popular logo designs, categorized in alphabetical order with a search feature, too
• The Evolution of Tech Company Logos, how famous logos came to be, from Neatorama
• The Evolution of Car Logos, more historical insights over on Neatorama
• Branding Firefox, a short insight into the history of the Firefox browser

Trends

“Logo trends” is a bit of an oxymoron. Granted, a logo should live and grow with a brand, but it shouldn’t adhere to the latest, greatest fads. Because of which I don’t much like these trend features, but I know they prove popular, so here you are.

• 2010 trends // 2009 // 2008 // 2007 // 2006 // 2005 // 2004 // 2003
  Bill Gardner of LogoLounge takes us through trends from the last decade according to the logos that have been uploaded to his website — and that’s a lot of logos.
• Logo trends in 2009 // and in 2008
  From LogoOrange.com.

Articles

• 100 unused logos and what they reveal about my design inclinations
  An excellent insight behind the designer by Armin of Speak Up.
• 6 reasons why a logo should cost more than your lunch
  Tara of Graphic Design Blog writes a short but sweet article.
• Logo Notions
  Jeff Fisher’s insightful collection of logo design articles on Creative Latitude.
• Logos with a meaning
  An extra insight into a selection of logos, by Ivan of CreativeBits.
• How many speech bubble logos have you seen lately?
  A fraction of what’s going down out there in Web Bubble Logo Land.
• The LogoWorks saga
  A huge collection of articles about the multi-million dollar business, LogoWorks.
• Is your logo design phallic?
  A little logo humour to lighten the mood.

Design agencies

• Lippincott
• Pentagram
• Johnson Banks
• The Brand Union
• Tayburn
• The Partners
• ico design
• MetaDesign
• FutureBrand
• Chermayeff & Geismar

Independent identity designers

• David Airey
  Yours truly. Shameless.
• Miles Newlyn
• Andrew Sabatier
• Jerry Kuyper
• Nancy Wu
• Denis Radenkovic, of 38one
• Roy Smith

Awards

• Wolda // 2008 winners showcase
  This is what used to be called Eulda (below), but has since expanded into the World Logo Design Awards (Wolda)
• Eulda 2007 winners // 2006 winners
  The winning entries from the European Logo Design Awards (Eulda) from 2007 and 2006.
• Identity: Best of 2007 winners // 2006 winners
  The results of an international logo design competition, judged by a very experienced panel.
• Logo Design Love Awards
  View the winners from the inaugural Logo Design Love Awards, featuring the best blog logos around.

Blogs

• Identity Designed, case studies from around the world
• Brand New, chat focusing on corporate and brand identity work
• Identity design category on davidairey.com, more chat from me
• logolog, from 38one
• Speak Up on Identity, the branding and identity category on Speak Up
• Logobird, a blog from down-under by Duane Kinsey

Illustrator tutorials

• N.DESIGN STUDIO
• Smashing Magazine
• Revitalise your logo with a Crescent Swish
  “Can I get a swoosh with that?” a little humour from Logo Hell

Showcases

• FIFA World Cup logos from 1950 to 2010
• 50 Olympic logos from 1924 to 2016
• Top 10 Rock Band Logos
• The Logo Design Love category for “designs”
• 10 examples of simple effective logos

Style guides and manuals

• Identityworks: Tools – Guidelines and Standards Manuals
• Channel 4 identity style guides
• Corporate Identity Documentation
• Boston University Brand Identity Standards
• NHS Brand Guidelines
• Designing Style Guidelines For Brands And Websites
• Christopher Doyle Brand Guidelines, write-up on Johnson Banks

Further resources

• Iconic logo designers — a rundown of the worlds most iconic designers
• Corporate identity catalogue — showing typefaces and Pantone references for some of the worlds main identites
• Forums for design feedback — upload work for what’s hopefully constructive criticism
• LogoLounge, paid registration for inclusion in the book series
• Designguide’s logo gallery — English translation of a German site about design and logos
• LogoPond, similar to LogoLounge, except free
• The big page of branding and corporate identity resources — covers manuals, guides, trademarking, laws, and more, from LogoOrange.com
• Sites for vector logo downloads — for when you need a well-known EPS file in a hurry

Hopefully that’ll keep you occupied for a while. If you know of any more design resources, do let me know.