The buzz around Organic today was all about Web 2.0 – not what it is, or what it does, but what it looks like.
It seems the visual style of Web 2.0 company is pretty easy to replicate once you have a few samples to work from.
And what really seems to be getting people’s juices flowing is applying that bright and cheery style to existing companies. Here’s a Flickr pool with hundreds of parodies.
But who’s being parodied here? Is it "old economy" firms that are shamelessly copying current trends in an attempt update their look? Payless ShoesSource is one company that gets called out by Be A Design Group.
Or is it Web 2.0 companies that are being sent up? Fontshop, an independent font retailer, offers an extensive critique of their common design style: "lots of blue, orange, and what we jokingly call the Official Color of Web 2.0: lime green…soft, rounded typefaces…All of these lend a modern friendliness to what might otherwise be a cold trademark".
It suggests an underlying suspicion that many of these new companies lack any originality, and that their logos simply hold up a mirror to a me-too attitude that pervades the entire industry.
My own thought is that it’s something a little more benign. Something about our shared experience (or shared insularity) affects similar people in similar ways, and in retrospect it appears that dozens of people have simultaneously come to the same decision. That’s how Organic found itself competing with Scient, Viant, and Sapient back in the days of Web 1.0 (thanks Max, Roger, and Trevor. Logo credit: Nicora)
Misha Cornes
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There are always design trends that come and go in waves, much like the clothing fashion industry. Companies reinvent themselves to appear modern by updating their look to latest styles. Designers follow magazines and trade publications to see what is currently hot. Little surprise then that similar looks crop up across designs created for similar purposes.
I think the “blame” if you will, lies as much with the designer as well as the client. Many of the business people behind these Web 2.0 start-ups have a me too approach and want their designers to make them a logo that looks like Flickr or Basecamp.
The greatest atrocities occur though when this trend/fad/aesthetic is applied to established brands and is veiled in the goal of “modernizing.” i.e. MasterCard, UPS, AT&T, Payless, Intel, DC Comics.