Art Chantry

According to the exceptionally creative and prolific designer Art Chantry, logos have never been through a weirder period. Even the design annuals don't know what to do with them, he points out. Logos have become a corporate addiction: Everyone has to have one, but nobody is quite sure why. As a result, in his eyes, they have become impotent accessories that look nice but really aren't necessary—the cuff buttons on the corporate identity power suit, if you will.

The problem has been curdling for a long time, Chantry says, relaxing in his St. Louis studio.

“Designers started to kill logos in the 1970s [by imitating] the abstract corporate look that designers like Lester Beall and Paul Rand had perfected. Logos were depersonalized to the point that they meant nothing. There were companies in Seattle at the time that designed logos that truly meant nothing: Think about the concept of that,” he says. Gone were logos such as the CBS eye and the Bell Telephone bell that not only graphically represented their companies adeptly, but they also could be run without a wordmark—a polite name for what Chantry calls “a caption.”

In the 1980s, there was a rebellion against the abstract. Logos became illustrative again, led by the push by Charles Spencer Anderson. While Chantry feels this was a step in the right direction, the stumble came from the fact that instead of expanding on the idea, most designers simply started imitating the style. “Everyone followed along just like lemmings,” he says.

Through the 1990s and up until today, the pendulum has inched steadily back up to the abstract, to the point where, again, many logos are meaningless squiggles. The story of logos in the 20 century reflects the story of business in the 20th century, Chantry believes.

“In the last 20 years especially, there has been a deconstruction of the purpose of logo design. I think that in many instances, logos have become unnecessary. Everyone thinks they need one, that a logo is the logical thing. But many companies have no head person at their lead anymore: Instead, a board of directors, running on fear and the desire to make money, are in charge. Maybe an abstract, mindless logo is the perfect answer to that,” he says.

The designer would like to see designers return to the tenets of the trademark—essentially, what a logo was called before branding cast its oppressive shadow over everything. A successful trademark could be abstract or illustrative or somewhere in between, but it represented its company A) by creating a dialogue with the viewer and B) without the necessity of a word descriptor nestled up close to it. A logo isn't working if it needs subtitles to explain it, he says.

For inspiration, Chantry likes to pick up old trademark books, issued at the turn of the century by the U.S. Patent Office. “In fact, I don't look at new design at all anymore. I just look at designs that are 1965 or older,” he says. “When I do a logotype, I rely on the name of the client to understand its personality or attitude, and then I depict the name in an aesthetic style, in just black and white.” The designer produces very stylized, very personal work, often identifiable as a Chantry creation. In some people's eyes, that means that the design is inherently bad, because the designer should not have that much of his hand in the mix. The designer doesn't care. Chantry has explored the planet of his client himself, and the logo he produces will be a result of his discoveries.

Will logos become extinct? Probably not, the designer says, but they will certainly evolve into another type of creature. He cites his work for Estrus Records as an example: Every project he designs for the client carries a different logo, one that is appropriate to the recorded musical creation it adorns. But the styles of the logos are related enough that people understand that they are all part of the same family. That's because they all reflect the core of the personality of Estrus, which Chantry describes as “popular American trash culture.”

“Companies need an identity, and the logo is the logical vehicle. But today, corporations have logos just because other corporations have logos. They are terrified of appearing different, so they do what everyone else does. I think designers have to be brave pioneers. Target has done this, reinventing itself and using an exhausted mark in a way that was new. That was not about the logo—that was about the company's identity,” Chantry explains.

©2007 Logolounge Inc.