Somebody posted their ‘logo design trends for 2016’ to a LinkedIN design group, so I decided to follow it. Much to my surprise, they talked about design techniques that have always been in use, and never go out of style. Needless to say, I was intriqued. Who really decides what the logo design trends for 2016 really are? I went on the quest.
Somebody posted their ‘logo design trends for 2016’ to a LinkedIN design group, so I decided to follow it. Much to my surprise, they talked about design techniques that have always been in use, and never go out of style. Needless to say, I was intriqued. Who really decides what the logo design trends for 2016 really are? I went on the quest.
Well, Google turned up nearly 4,000 web pages where the author predicts logo design trends. Wow. Now I’m wondering if they all picked the same trends, or if they were just all using the subject title “Logo Design Trends for 2016” to get readership and clicks.
So I started looking at the sites that floated to the top of Google’s list. Not that you can always depend on those results as the truth, but it’s a good starting place. Of course the www.CreativeBloq got the top spot, and it looks like the guy on LinkedIN copied this almost verbatim. So the guy on LinkedIN ‘borrowed’ the most popular ideas and reposted them as his own article just to get the clicks. Thumbs down for him.
As a side note, the www.CreativeBloq article isn’t without fault. This ‘infographic’ just touts picked up content from a dozen logo design text books borrowed from the likes of Jeff Fisher and Michael Bierut. Here, take a quick look at this.
Then there are the wannabees. All those thousands of fresh-out-of-design-school greenhorns racing to put their mark in the industry. They haven’t yet discovered the fact that becoming a good designer takes work and skill. So they race out and set up their design web site. And in all that idle time they have on their hands they begin churning out articles that will demonstrate their divine wisdom. You see the technique all the time : 1) search for the topic you’re about to write about, 2) pick the top hit on Google, 3) re-word the content and 4) publish it as your own. Simple. Takes an hour, and brings hundreds of thousands of other wannabee designers in to share your wisdom.
Next in line is Jacob Cass’s “Just Creative” the amazingly popular web blog that talks about graphic design. Of course he rules in the LOGO keywords because he’s been hitting on it for so long you cannot avoid it. But since his are almost like those found everywhere else, we really don’t know who came up with it first. I believe Jacob probably did. Both seem to think that “Negative space” is a trend and show the tired old FedEx logo again! (Just like 394,000 other articles online (according to Google) that talk about negative space including my articles on Negative space over the years. )
I guess the lesson to learn here is that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and there are really no design trends. There’s good design and there’s bad design. There are logos that succeed in performing the challenges and obligations of a logo, and logos that don’t. Now, remember there are a host of others that may or may not seem to be the right look — all searching for someone to validate their worth. Like all these thousands of designers who want us to look at their designs and tell them how fabulous they are.
If you run across a particularly good article on logo design, pass it along. I’d love to share your discoveries with other 60-Second Windows and DT&G readers!
You can catch up with the guy everyone else follows at Just Creative
Be sure not to miss Michael Bierut on the topic of logos.
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