Hasta La Ideas

When we asked readers to nominate their favourite logos last week we received a lot of votes for the classics of the genre. But the exercise also threw up some less celebrated but still worthy contenders

For a special issue in April, we are putting together a list of the 25 greatest logos. Last week, we asked readers to nominate their top five. Among the Apples, FedExs and V&As, readers also drew our attention to some forgotten classics and little known favourites.

Lindsay put forward the 1974 New Zealand Commonwealth Games logo by Colin Simon (shown top). The mark cleverly combines the 7 and 4 of the year, the NZ of New Zealand, the Union Jack and even an X for the tenth games. Read more about it here

Not exaclty a classic but thanks to Kevin Mills for nominating the logo for steel wool manufacturer Trollull – “‘It’s got to be the barmiest, friendliest logo ever, certainly amongst steel wool manufacturers.” Quite.

There was quite a bit of support for Raymond Loewy’s New Man ambigram from 1969

Alan Fletcher’s Lucas Industries mark was also noted

and don’t forget David Gentleman’s 1968 British Steel logo

Alan Clarke nominated, among others, the Leica mark

the 1968 Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch railways) logo by Gert Dumbar and Gert-Jan Leuvelink for Tel Design had a lot of fans

On a very different plane, ‘Fidalgo’ suggested Santa Cruz skateboards’ Screaming Hand by Jim Phillips

Mrfishyfish reminded us not to forget the work of Bulgaria’s Stefan Kanchev including the logo for the Publishing House of the Communist Party

and the Operetta State Theater

David reminded us of couple of British favourites from yesteryear – ATV television

and the original WH Smith logo

and AJ Kandy mentioned that “Quebec in the late 60s and 70s had some amazing logo design. Editions de L’Homme, the Caisse Desjardins’ ‘beehive’ hexagon motif for a credit union (below), Hydro-Quebec’s Q-with-lighting-bolt-tail, etc.

The classic 1974 CBC logo by Burton Kramer rocks too.”

American readers will be more familiar with the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad logo mentioned by Luke Tonge

We’ve partnered with the Brand New blog on this exercise – you can see their readers’ suggestions here

Also transport related and suggested by a couple of you, the logo for Italian cycle maker Campagnolo

Thanks to everyone who posted suggestions – almost 300 of you. We’d still like more, especially from beyond the UK and US, We will also be posting about the most popular contenders so far and comparing the Brand New suggestions to the ones posted on this site