Using Cubism in Logo Design

Jennifer Farley
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Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, which is closely associated with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. This art style revolutionized European painting and sculpture.

Georges Braque: Woman with a guitar, painted 1913, in the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.In cubist artworks, and as we’ll see in the case of the logos featured, objects are broken up, and re-assembled in a very abstract and somewhat disconcerting form. The cubist artist depicts objects from more than one viewpoint, with surfaces intersecting at random angles. A normal sense of depth in an object is removed.

Today, identity designers are using this fine art style for inspiration for their logo work. The cubist style reduces images down to a level of simplicity, and simplicity is one of the more important features of a good logo. Many of the logos have an illustrated hand-drawn feel about them which is eye-catching and aesthetically pleasing, moving away from the very clean, computerized look of some vector-based logos.

So for your viewing pleasure and design inspiration, here’s a small collection of cubist style logos.

CubistCoffee

Cubist Coffee by James Strange

Vanguard

Vanguard by Karmesi

Toro

Toro by Van Paul

Melbourne

Melbourne City Logo

USVirginIslands

U.S. Virgin Islands by J Walter Thompson

cubist_logo

Cubist (Cultural Business: Impact, Strategy and Technology) Research Group

london2012_logo

Ok, maybe this one isn’t so inspirational, but I just had to include the London 2012 Olympics logo.

What do you think of these logo designs?

Main Image Credit: Georges Braque: Woman with a guitar, painted 1913, in the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.