Logo Trends 2011 – An annual review by LogoLounge
Full article: Logo Trends 2011 – LogoLounge
Excerpt:
For the 2011 report, our ninth, color is still prevalent, but tinted down. Where black has been used as the strong neutral, now brown or gray is in place. Blues and greens are softer, and pinks are starting to appear.
Other degrees of lightness: Shapes are airier, lifting off the page. Designs are rising out of their 2D resting places and suggesting that they would really like to go places. In some logos, line weights are slimmer. There’s plenty of transparency, too, as if light is now able to flow right through.
It feels like what people believe a logo to be is also becoming more transcendent. A logo is no longer a single piece of flat art. It can be a favicon, an icon, or an entire set of marks that work together to support the team. Its boundaries have become less strict as well. There was a time when most logos could be enclosed in a simple hand-drawn square, circle or similar geometric shape, but now many logos drag outside those outlines. They just don’t want to fit the old mold.
We also saw plenty of:
- Items related to wine—bottles, corks, glasses, corkscrews.
- Sticking with the light theme, lots of sunrises—or are they sunsets?
- For some curious reason, mortar and pestles, owls, and zebras (not in the same designs).
- Single-, double- or triple-line ribbons—almost like Chartpak tape of the 1970s—that run through letters and designs.
- What stood out most of all were trees (which incidentally is the most searched-for word on the LogoLounge site). There was also a hyper-resurgence of leaves, but leaves being used in really creative way: floating on water to represent stepping stones, celtic knots built out of leaves, a sculling team rowing a leaf-boat, the veins of which represent oars. Trees and leaves are not just used to represent sustainability/nature anymore, but the designs in which they are used do get the added perk of being basking in a pleasing ecological light.
