Letters as Symbols

Paul Ibou designed during his career more than 350 logos & symbols and is one of the important pioneers in modern graphic design. Next to his design activities he published numerous books on symbols and logo's. In 1991 he built the foundations of the book Letters As Symbols: the concept, the cover and the basic layout. The book was never released and remained untouched for decades until young graphic designer Christophe De Pelsemaker and Paul Ibou established a collaboration in 2017. Paul Ibou acquired an enormous amount of logos through submission forms that were sent to him by the leading logo and brand identity designers of that time like Saul Bass, Burton Kramer, Anton Stankowski, Yasaburo Kuwayama, Ken Cato, Wim Crouwel and many more. Letters As Symbols, contains logos from these submissions and was completed with contemporary work. Each logo is based on a letter of the Latin alphabet (A-Z) and forms an excellent source of inspiration for designers, artists, agencies, teachers, typographers, students, and many others.

Paul Ibou was a Belgian graphic designer and sculptor. He designed, among other things, a number of logos for large organisations. At the age of 17, Paul created his personal logo and pseudonym. Based on a few spheres and a simple body shape, he made a stylised owl. This owl shape would later return in many of his designs. Owl is "hibou" in French. Vermeersch left out the "h" and looked for a way to make "Ibou" an acronym. It became "Inventive Book Designer and Publisher". Paul Ibou worked first at an advertising studio and then briefly at a photogravure studio. In 1958 he completed the course "Publicity and Letters" at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp . He further studied at the "Higher Institute for Printing" of the Plantin Institute for Typography. Ibou then went to work for Nutricia as an art director. In 1961 Ibou became an independent designer and a few years later he received the first important commissions, including in 1965 for the Biennale for Sculpture in the Middelheim Park in Antwerp. In 1967 he made his first international study trip, which took him to New York. Ibou's fame increased and he received numerous assignments for major institutions. In 1980 he founded a magazine about design: Vorm in Vlaanderen. Of these, 14 issues and 2 yearbooks were published. In 1984 the magazine was stopped after Ibou was involved in a serious car accident, for which he had to recuperate for a long time. In 2001, Ibou stopped working as a graphic designer and focused on painting and sculpture. He sadly passed away in 2023, but his archive lives on through printed matter.