Book Review: American Trademarks: A Compendium
July 15th, 2010 Filed under: Reviews - Books by admin
Book Review: American Trademarks: A Compendium
Edited By: Eric Baker & Tyler Blik
Chronicle Books
At first glance a book about trademarks seems… unnecessary. After all, they’re just the symbolic manifestation of the corporate class’ control over our lives, another link in the chains of wage-slavery, right? Maybe, if you want to get all dramatic and overly indignant. So what are they, then? Are they meaningless? Superfluous? Are they even worth the effort of analysis? As you read American Trademarks: A Compendium it becomes increasingly clear page after page that this book is not going to answer any of these questions. American Trademarks: A Compendium is pretty much exactly what its title says: a compendium (compendium: a short, complete summary; a list or collection of various items) of trademarks from that world-wariest of centuries: the 20th. So aside from a brief introduction and a two-page “from the editors” bit, there really isn’t a whole lot in the book that isn’t an old trademark, except for some graphic designer talking about how much he likes all the old trademarks from time to time.
So while there isn’t a whole lot of exposition on the parts of the editors in terms of information about the history of the trademarks in the book or trademarks in general once you really get into it, get down and dirty and really start perusing the trademarks themselves you quickly realize two things: 1) this shit is pretty cool and 2) we’re in the future, dude. It really is crazy how far we’ve come when you think about it, and reading this book certainly makes you think about it. Take for example the trademark for “Genuine Peruvian Guano” – 1925, Nitrate Agencies Co. and compare it to a modern trademark and not only is the style completely different but so is the purpose of the mark. In 1925 Nitrate Agencies Co. wasn’t trying to sell a lifestyle, they weren’t pushing “brand synergy”, they were just saying “our Peruvian guano is genuine, dog.”
Even the way in which the trademark would have been made is completely alien to the way it would be done today, using an array of archaic typesetting machinery and probably some kind of frantic chaplin-esque character covered in ink instead of crazy super-computers and sweet lasers. American Trademarks: A Compendium is a port-hole in time, a way too look into the past and catch the slightest glimpse of what it was like to live without global warming and pizza pops and maybe understand what that means. Plus it’s a pretty cool coffee-table book and $29.95 US is a pretty good price to pay for that kind of thing.
By A.W. Reid
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