Have We Attained the End of Ideas? - World Logo Shortage Reaches a Crisis Point.

It has been predicted for ages. Even back in the '90s, when half of the new logos designed had some sort of a CD motif, logo doomsayers were saying the days of spontaneous, free flowing ideas were already at an end.

Imagination had reached a point of ebb. But, even in the face of such vivid proof of the dearth of ideas on the corporate globe, the dearth deniers held on to a strand of hope. Somehow our intrepid graphic designers got through that imaginative recession, tapping into fertile new fields of creativity. Rather than wilt on the vine, the logo designing industry has thrived. Logos were everywhere. The internet became a banquet, a feast of new logos. Then logo derivatives, like icons and avatars took their places alongside the earlier "pictograms". We might even say that the Onesies Decade, as yet unnamed, was the Logo Decade. Perhaps, somewhere back there in '06 or '08, we may have even attained that mythical summit of "Peak Idea".

But now, it seems, the end of ideas is nearer than ever. Witness the two logos shown here. It says something, not sure what, that they both originate in British Columbia. Both the Down Syndrome Research Foundation and the Kelowna Museums organization are proud of their logos and rightfully so. And yes, they are both kinda cool, especially the visible single crease, characteristic of the down syndrome palm.

Seriously though, if there is a message here, it may have something to do with the limitations of the corporate model to reflect the uniqueness of humanity. Or, put another way, as hard as a logo strives to exert a corporation's or organization's uniqueness, all it really does is show how most organizations are quite a bit the same.