I’ve finished reading Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials now, and I thought it was wonderful. The ideas and characters are still floating round in my head. One of the charms of the trilogy is the little little symbolic illustrations at the beginning of each chapter, drawn in pen and ink by Pullman himself. They are simple, and black and white. Pullman has written about how he did them, and also features them on his site, though the ones for the last book are not up there yet:

View Northern Light illustrations
View The Subtle Knife illustrations

I love the way they pinpoint in a nutshell, the essense of each chapter. My impression is that this doesn’t happen so much in books anymore. We are used to icons and symbols in software, or maps, for example, but those are more to do with function. Trademarks and logos are different again, more about branding and identifying; perhaps, as Michael suggested, a modern version of heraldic design.