folly stars

Landor and Associates, La Caixa	Desgrippes Gobé, Travelocity
Landor and Associates, Apria Healthcare	Wages Design, Chick-fil-A University

The star has always been a foundation stone of logo design, rife with symbology that varies from jingoistic federalism to quality and celestial guidance. No less important today, the star has literally taken on a life of its own as it starts to shed its strict geometry for arms and legs and wings. The shape has had a transfusion of personality and imperfection, so that it now rivals any human. This generation is much more approachable, while maintaining the same symbolic pedigree of its ancestors.

amalgams

Wolff Olins/Miles Newlyn, Unilever	Chermayeff & Geismar, Inc., Tennessee Aquarium
Insight Design, Richard Lynn’s Shoe Market	MetaDesign, The Ocean Conservancy

These assemblies of diverse elements may credit their throwback to Pierre Bernard's logo for the Parcs Nationaux de France (French National Parks), a seminal mark based on a Fibonacci spiral crafted from the silhouettes of every piece of flora and fauna in the parks. Miles Newlyn, working with Wolff Olins, has managed to build an equally enchanting logo for Unilever. This trend bucks the notion of assembling everything known about an organization and boiling it down to a single image. Instead, the designer displays those ingredients so that every element is preserved and displayed in an arrangement that takes on an additional layer of meaning more replete than any individual component alone. The detail of these logos can become as addictive as a good puzzle or flavorful pasta sauce.

blow out

FutureBrand Australia, Brand Australia	Gardner Design, Viziworx Enhanced Television
Cato Purnell Partners, Terry White Chemists	Creative Development Association, Third World Mission Association

I still cheer every time I see a logo successfully chip away at the tenets of traditional logo design. This trend is one such rebel. It stands up and proclaims, “To hell with vectored edges!” This group is beautifully crafted. The shape is formed, but then a 5,000-watt krypton bulb blows out the mark’s critical edges. The nerve to build an implied aura in a flat world is rewarded when the design calls for it. Melbourne's FutureBrand Australia could have captured a continent with a bounding kangaroo and sun, but they sealed the deal for adventurers and sun worshippers worldwide by welding a solar flare right into the viewers mind.