Michele Galluzzo, Logo In Real Life, Note per una storia sociale della visual identity, 2024

What happens to logos when they encounter the real world? When they leave corporate identity manuals, branding agencies, designer portfolios, brand guidelines? When do they encounter memes, counterfeits, protests, fashion, pop culture or counterculture? What happens when logos start living In Real Life?
In this book, which collects a series of ‘Notes for a social history of visual identity’, Michele Galluzzo tries to answer these questions, and tells a ‘different’ story: the one that pits graphic design professionals against the public that consumes, uses and re-appropriates communication. In a sort of participatory archive, made up of mispronunciations, rip-offs and détournements, Galluzzo shows the logos in a new guise: not as intact objects resulting from the genius of professionals and masters, but as liquid forms, emerging from below in dialogue with the public and their context.
Logo IRL is a counter-narrative in which graphic design icons become ‘open works’, and the public participates in the evolution of the life of brands and graphic design in a broader sense.