I Heart Design

no. 37

SELECTED BYSAGI HAVIVTHE CBS EYE LOGODESIGNED BYWILLIAM GOLDEN

As a designer in the modernist tradition, I value simplicity and originality above all. In trademark design, this often means creating a mark out of elementary shapes to achieve universality and timelessness, but configuring those shapes in a way that is original and distinctive. There is no better exemplar of this than the CBS eye. Designed by CBS’s art director William Golden and first appearing on the air in 1951, the logo takes simple, elementary shapes—two circles, two arcs—and configures them into an original form—a pictographic eye. It’s been in use, unchanged, for sixty years. It’s so distinctive it can stand on its own without the name of the company attached to it. ...