Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols

It's a must have if you care for icons. Wish it was hardcover.

Four stars because a book that is involved with communication does it in such a disappointing way. The cover, text pages, bibliography and index are extremely bland. For instance, the few text pages have a line space between the paragraphs and also an indentation on the first line of each par, the bibliography is set in the same weight of type so punctuation is required, this can nearly be eliminated by using various weights of type to separate the different elements, the twenty-two page index could have been less if it was set in three columns instead of two.However this is an important book and the symbol content rightly deserves five stars. Henry Dreyfuss started work on this project in the fifties while working for an oil-drilling equipment manufacturer, who wanted some way of communicating with workers in parts of the world where English was uncommon. Two-dimensional illustrations were developed and Dreyfuss slowly expanded the scope of the idea into this book, which presents several thousand in twenty-six categories.The selection is very comprehensive, pages ninety and ninety-one include hobo signs with one for Cowards Will Give, To Get Rid Of You, or Free Telephone, which looks remarkably like a profile of a turkey. A fascinating four pages show Olympic symbols from the Games of 1948, 64, 68 and 72. I think 1968 are clearly the best, the designer avoided using stylised human forms and presented basic sport elements in a black rounded corner box. Throughout the book, where there is space, Dreyfuss has added sidebars on a variety of topics relating to symbol origins and usage.To make this book as practical as possible the contents page is in eighteen languages, a good example of why Henry Dreyfuss, apart from being a great industrial designer, was also a person who never lost his humanity.

This is one of the best books on symbols by one of the best designers of the 20th Century! It includes everything from technical symbols to hobo and astrology signs. If you are an interactive designer this book will prove to be a useful tool for research for icon design.

I just recently flipped through this book and definitely stopped me from looking for the actually book I was looking for. If you love symbols, this is it. It contains symbols from areas such as medical field to underground symbols used by hobos, which I found pretty interesting. It contains in depth symbolism of colors. Virtually all symbols that you might recognize or not are here. Check it out.

I use Symbol Sourcebook as a bible for interpreting meaning from it's very thorough pages. It is full of insightful and seemingly rare symbols. From engineering to chemistry to any other form of language through symbol this book by Mr. Dreyfuss is astounding. It is my reference for many, many corporate identity projects.