Rubenerd

Last year I wrote about MediaWiki’s new logo, and talked of the general trend among logo designers towards bland, dull, uninteresting, unoriginal, and largely interchangeable marks.

Neil of the imitable Matchstick Cats and the late great IntoYourHead podcast (I miss joining him at those incredibly exciting moments), sees the positive:

Good. Brands exist to trick us into parting with our money or our good judgement. If they’re less good at creating then that’s a welcome development.

He’s onto something. Just Creative linked logo design to the current global climate, dubbing them “reblands”:

[…] the Great Recession also contributed to a reduced appetite for all things excessive. While this can easily be seen on the fashion and decor side, all aspects of design are inextricably linked — logo fonts included.

I happen to think (that’s dangerous) that’s a good thing. Less stuff we don’t need, spent with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like, the better.