“Symbols don’t make clear what you do; it makes it clear who you are.”
This year the inimitable branding firm Chermayeff Geismar & Haviv celebrates its 60th anniversary. Over the past six decades, these godfathers of corporate graphic design created logos for PBS, MoMA, PanAm, NBC, Chase, and more. And in a new video produced by Dress Code for the AIGA, the late Ivan Chermayeff (1932–2017) and Tom Geismar reflect on their past and augur the future of design, including timeless wisdom about what makes a good logo. Three nuggets of wisdom are below.