Logo obsessive Bill Gardiner spends a lot of time time thinking about icons, symbols and logos. He has distilled that thought into a very long post on the state of this particular art, reflecting particularly on the growing ascendancy of mobile viewing platforms.
“So as we toil to conform to these new parameters, designers are developing a new set of iconography, and the adolescents, children, even infants of today are experiencing a very different visual dynamic than generations before them.”
Gardiner believes that icons and image based languages will become an important element of communication, perhaps displacing written language to some extent.
Perhaps the most enjoyable part of his post is the breakdown of logo design trends into categories such as: dot-tips, contours, sparkles, pick-up sticks, colouring, circle breaks and so on. Designers tend to move in packs, and even if they strive for originality, can't fight the gravitational pull of influence.