Paul Ibou

Paul Ibou

Paul Ibou is a Belgian graphic designer whose work includes 350 logos and symbols for corporations and public institutions, and in 1980 he started the publication Vorm in Vlaanderen. He has a great collection of work. My personal favorite is this calendar. I’m sucker for a tightly kerned sans-serif.

You can see more of his work on Iconofgraphics.com.

Symbol

The new book Symbol by Angus Hyland of Pentagram looks like a gem.

The book features over 1300 symbols, organized into groups and sub-groups according to their visual characteristics. Each category includes a short introduction on who the symbol was designed for, the designer, and in some cases, what the symbol stands for. These sections are interspersed with short case studies on both classic and more recently designed symbols.

Scout EP Cover

scout-ep-cover.jpg

I recently designed the cover of a promo EP for a New York City band called Scout. The album is titled “All Those Relays” and after speaking with the band I was inspired to use circuit schematic symbols in the design. I find the schematics to be visually interesting and the symbols have a certain beauty to them. I’ve always seen different letters in the symbols, so I had the idea of forming the album name using the symbols in a schematic.

After researching the standard symbols used in the industry, I knew that I would have to just make up some of the symbols myself. So some of them are actual symbols, some are variations on symbols and some are completely fabricated.

The toughest part was forming the letters, but not making them too obvious and at the same time remaining true to the standard symbols. Doing this and keeping a seamless circuit also proved to be difficult. I went through a few pencil sketches before settling on a path.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the results. You can check out more photos on my site.