A post on Quora asks, “Which is world’s most expensive logo ever?”
And that got me thinking about Best Products. In 1979 I was working as a freelance designer at (among others) Webb & Athey (their advertising agency of record at the time), when Best Products hired the New York design firm of Chermayeff & Geismar to create a new logo.
I seem to remember someone saying they paid the astronomical sum of $250,000.00 for the logo—but I must tell you, it was just a rumor and I have no idea whether or not it was true. Suffice it to say, the top branding companies have always commanded impressive fees for developing brand strategies.
Best Products was one of the first companies to popularize the “catalog showroom” in the 1970s—a retail model that came and went in the course of roughly 20 years. But the company’s real claim to fame was the interest its owners, Sydney and Frances Lewis, had in art and architecture and how they helped to pioneer the collaboration between business and creative.
Anyone recall the actual cost of the Best Products logo?
The Best Products logo was designed by Chermayeff & Geismar…
The logo, considered groundbreaking at the time, was included here (page 124)…
Identify: Basic Principles of Identity Design in the Iconic Trademarks of Chermayeff & Geismar…
The Best Products Catalog, 1980…
It includes this passage: “What we came up with was a self-referential typographic logo that was a literalization of the company’s name and business model: each letter larger than the preceding one, just as each product model was better than the last… We presented only a few variations of the same concept of the Lewises, as the idea seemed unassailably right.”
An article about the architecture…
From MoMA: Buildings for Best Products (12.2MB PDF)…
From FailedArchitecture.com: The Ironic Loss of the Postmodern Best Store Facades…
From ArchDaily: When Art, Architecture and Commerce Collided: The BEST Products Showrooms by SITE…
About Sydney and Francis Lewis and their art background…
From SITE, the architectural firm that designed the buildings…
The original question from Quora…
Sydney and Frances Lewis were patrons of the arts…
Image: Milton Glaser Design Study Center
Posted in NOVEMBER 2019 / Chuck Green is the principal of Logic Arts, a design and marketing firm, a contributor to numerous magazines and websites, and the author of books published by Random House, Peachpit Press, and Rockport Publishers. All rights reserved. Copyright 2007-2019 Chuck Green/Logic Arts Corporation. Contact.
Thoughts?