The true purpose of the Web, revealed.
Almost every day, the Web delivers me a big, fat, favor. This morning, it's this Flickr set taken from World of Logotypes, a collection of trademarks, most executed in the so-called International Style, published in the mid-1970s. Looking at the thumbnail page, what struck me is how many of the logos matched the stroke width and color of Helvetica Bold (or Berthold AG Old Style Medium, which was still in common use then). No surprise—since that typeface was the corporate brander's choice in those days— but I had never really thought of it in those terms until I saw them all collected on a single surface.
Many thanks, Mr. Carl, for the exhaustive post, and for the inspiration: it occurs to me that we really need to get one of those saddle-type scanners designed for books so that we can share some of our library; these books are getting more scarce, and such a resource would render a good deed to my pocketbook.
On a related note, I remember encountering at Powell's a similar collection containing trademarks executed by Pinch colleague Mr. Hal Wolverton in his youth. I didn't buy that book at the time, and now I regret it; Hal claims not to know anything about it, but I think he'd just as soon forget it. I don't share that opinion: if any of you come across it, holler.