Logo in Real Life: Notes for a social history of visual identity

Set Margins, 2026, softcover, 280 pages, 11.5 x 18 cm

An historical and critical reading of graphic design's icon, the logo, in its actual lived context.

This is the untold social history of logo's: where logos start living In Real Life, where they move away from corporate identity manuals and brand guidelines. This is where they do they encounter memes, counterfeits, protests, fashion, pop culture or counterculture more organically. Should we come to another understanding of logo's?

The book both archives and studies informal circulation, and dives into the consequences of this. It presents a different story: one that is conceived through the public that consumes, uses and re-appropriates logos. The participatory archive, organising mispronunciations, rip-offs and détournements, the book discusses logos in a new guise: not as intact objects resulting from the genius of professionals and masters, but as liquid form.

Logo IRL reframes the narrative in which graphic design icons are ‘open works’, and the public participates in the evolution of the life of brands and graphic design.