Why designers keep trying to kill the logo

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BY James I. Bowie

“Logomania is over,”?declared Teo Van den Broeke, British?GQ’s style and grooming director, in the?Financial Times?earlier last month. He was referring to the unfortunate fashion world trend of plastering every square inch of articles of clothing with designer logos, and suggesting that it was no longer compatible with the reality of these uncertain economic times.

But what of logomania in the larger business world? Over many decades, the logo has taken on an outsize prominence as the most obvious and ubiquitous visual representation of the brand. And while branding practitioners may insist, correctly, until they are blue in the face that the logo is only the tip of the brand iceberg, it remains the case that, as designer Sir John Sorrell pointed out, “Iceberg tips are actually rather important because they’re the things you can see.”

As more and more corners of our world became branded, various factoids, some perhaps apocryphal, popped up to quantify and illustrate the extent of the logo’s takeover. “The average person sees as many as 600 trademarks in a single day,” wrote Samuel G. Michini in an?Industrial Marketing?article in 1959. By 2007, the number of logos in our lives had exploded. Design critic Alice Rawsthorn noted in the?International Herald Tribune?that “the average Western consumer is said to be exposed to more than 3,000 corporate symbols a day.”

Amid this firehose of trademarks blasting across society, there have been plenty of predictions that consumers would tire of logos, often from designers themselves. All the way back in 1994, Richard Ford, creative director of Landor Associates—now known as Landor & Fitch and recognized for its work on behalf of FedEx, Pepsi, and Verizon—speculated in the design publication?Eye?that the transition to designing for screens would allow for the use of more sophisticated graphic elements that could become “widespread to the point of undermining the hegemony of the logo.” In 2007, corporate image consultant Naseem Javed, writing in the?Asia Times?in wake of the?hideous London Olympics logo?unveiling, put it bluntly: “Let’s face it, in this hyper-accelerated society, logos are almost dead. Fifty years ago, customers remembered the logos of IBM or Chevrolet…Not today. Pick 10 companies and try to remember their logos, and ask yourself if they really have an impact.”

Most strikingly, designer Simon Manchipp, founder of UK design practice SomeOne,?wrote in?Design Week?in 2010 that “Logos are a hangover from another time. They need to be shaken off, moved away from, de-focused.” Later, he doubled down, calling logos “pointless,” “rubbish,” and “dead.” And yet, in the past 10 years, over one million new logos were filed for registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, 65% more than had been submitted in the decade prior. These marks now coat the physical and digital surfaces of our society in increasingly wider swaths, leaving virtually no space unbranded, from mobile apps to the bottom-right corner of your?TV screen?to?rooftop solar arrays?to?human bodies.?

Designers rightfully would like to be acknowledged by the public?for their many skills beyond logo design. At times, they must feel like Sir Mix-a-Lot taking the stage eager to perform a wide range of his hits, only to hear the crowd immediately cry out for “Baby Got Back.” Likewise, branding agencies are certainly keen to charge their clients for much more than just the creation of a new logo. And it may be that, in the visual cacophony of today’s brandscape, logos don’t pack the same punch they did in the less-cluttered decades of the past. But as U.S. companies continue to crank out symbols numbering in the six figures every year, it’s clear that the logomania gripping the world of branding won’t be abating anytime soon.?

James I. Bowie is a sociologist at Northern Arizona University who studies trends in logo design and branding. He reports on his research at his website,?Emblemetric.com.

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