Unit Editions

The first comprehensive study of corporate identity design manuals from the golden era of identity design. In today’s landscape, designers rely on digital templates to implement brand identities – fast, accurate and easily updatable, these digital manuals are now obligatory. But we have lost something in the transition to digital style guides, and the great printed standards manuals from the pre-digital era deserve a better fate than to be junked. This comprehensive study of corporate design manuals from the golden era of identity design makes a compelling case for their survival and continued appreciation. The 41 manuals featured have been expertly photographed, retaining all essential details, and are presented in a spacious and functional layout, allowing you to fully appreciate these wonderful examples of sophisticated information design. The photography is accompanied by a foreword by the late Massimo Vignelli, an afterword by designer Lance Wyman, and texts from Adrian Shaughnessy, Richard Danne (NASA designer), Martha Fleming (daughter of Allan Fleming, designer of the Canadian National Railway logo), Greg D’Onofrio and Patricia Belen, alongside interviews with Armin Vit, Sean Perkins, John Lloyd, Michael Burke, Sean Wolcott, Liza Enebeis and John Bateson.

The long-awaited monograph of the UK’s leading graphic design and branding agency. The world is full of design companies, but none of them are like North. Formed in 1995 by Sean Perkins, the studio has always followed a highly individualistic path. This individualism manifests itself in many ways: most notably in the absence of a densely populated studio website; there are no hyperactive social media feeds; even the studio’s name, derived from Perkins’ origins in the unmetropolitan north of England, stands for frill-free, plain speaking, visual directness. It’s almost as if North is a well-kept secret. Yet the group has a devoted worldwide following, and attracts myriad clients keen to hire them for their ability to produce memorable and carefully engineered visual identities. North’s work is the product of sharp-brained research, high-end craft and precise visual expression. And as can be seen in the pages of this book, the studio’s first monograph, the result is a rich crop of brand identities, packaging, exhibitions, books, posters and logos. It includes work for Tate, Southbank, Munch (Oslo), Co-op, Barbican, Samsung, Meta, Science Museum, The Royal Mint and M+ (Hong Kong). On the grounds that graphic design is required to ‘speak for itself’, the book dispenses with descriptive or biographical texts. Instead, the reader is engaged by more than 300 pages of articulate and eloquent visual expression, arranged in a rigorously planned mix of photography, typography, layout and colour. Like North itself, the book is unlike other design books. That’s what makes it a North book.