LORD OF THE LOGOS: DESIGNING THE METAL UNDERGROUND

I’ve always found metal logos to be fascinating. Shit, we even have a weekly contest based on ’em. I once penned a blog post for another website proclaiming death metal the best of all metal sub-genres because it had the coolest logos; maybe that piece will see the light of day some time soon. But there’s just something so great about metal logos… you [can often] know loosely what a band will sound like just from the particular style of their logo. I don’t think this is true for other genres of music, but maybe one of our readers with a deeper knowledge of, say, indie rock can tell me why I’m wrong.

The German design book publisher Gestalten is publishing a book on this very topic — specifically black metal logos — by Chrisophe “Lord of the Logos” Szpajdel. A press release tells us that the “book is a collection of hundreds of Szpajdel’s powerful hand-drawn nature-inspired logos that combine letters with visual elements from art movements such as art deco and art nouveau.” The publisher has graciously made available several preview pages from the book, and what’s cool about this book is that it isn’tjust a collection of logos; the logos are juxtaposed with the artistic photographs of nature that directly inspired them, like the preview above. I totally see the resemblance, and it’s neat to see that these logos aren’t “just” random scratchy lines.

Check out a very high-quality version of the above image as well as one more that’s equally as cool. The book is 272 pages of full color print and comes out this month for € 35,00 / $ 55,00 / £ 32,50; order it here (when it becomes available).

-VN

Images used with permission By Christophe Szpajdel from Lord of the Logos, Copyright Gestalten 2010