PERSONALIZATION34 Personal Logos

The development of formal graphic identities for companies emerged at about the same time as midcentury modernism. The trend marked a shift from an ad hoc approach to branding to a more deliberate one. Monolithic consistency was the prevailing wisdom, governing how the great captains of twentieth-century industry created recognizable and memorable identities. Today, a new trend has emerged.

Some of the strongest graphic identities of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have challenged this wisdom, gaining notoriety in the process. Cable television vanguard MTV famously versioned its logo based on context (a different treatment for a program like “Yo MTV Raps” vs. “120 Minutes”) or whim. Given the ...

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