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He did logo work while looking for a full- time job until a man who was working for him asked him a simple question: “You are supporting me and my family. Why are you looking for a job when you already have one?” It was then that Gardner realized he had his own business. Wichita had no American Institute of Graphic


Arts (AIGA) chapter; so, as the president of what had become Gardner Design, he started one and began to connect with other designers, visiting whenever he could with those who held knowledge in the field. In 1997, when eBay was in its infancy, Gardner was fascinated that someone in Britain could take a photo of, say, a teapot and anyone in the world could see it instantly and buy it. He wondered about the potential of an online encyclopedia of logos, where people could upload their work and tag it with keywords so it would be searchable for site visitors (or members, as it turns out). He had 2,000 logos in his encyclopedia its first year.


Today, LogoLounge.com houses 350,000 logos and is a repository site where, in real time, members can post their logo design work and search the work of others by keyword, designer name, client type, and more.


Today, LogoLounge.com houses 350,000


logos and is a repository site where, in real time, members can post their logo design work and search the work of others by keyword, designer name, client type, and more. The site also offers


WBWHAT’S NEXT IN LOGOS? After living in a world where a logo can represent a company, developments


By Bill Gardner


such as augmented reality could change the game again. Might we have log logos that switch between fonts and a symbol or a font and a smell? If my logo igo is on a screen digitally, as I walk into augmented reality, is my logo flat? Can


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I walk behind it? Does it have weight? What material is it? Would it bounce if I dropped it? Is it live? Does it quiver? What does it feel like when you touch it? Is the next thing just a sensation you have that associates you with that business? What is it that pushes the brand into that next level of enticement? The things we imagine are still faux reality, so we are still living amidst crude forms of


marketing, but when we get closer to a new sense of reality, it will be a different world. A restaurant with a logo you can smell is simple to imagine, but what happens if a brand can turn on a specific memory of yours through a sense with different triggers for different people—the scent of your first girlfriend’s perfume or that Lacoste shirt you were wearing when you met your wife? Could we rely on haptic technology, so you could touch a screen showing snow and it would feel like snow? I’m convinced that in the future, the evolutions in logo design will be radical.


news curated for logo designers. Today, still for $100 per year, members can upload as many logos as they want. Additionally, the $100 membership fee lets users submit unlimited entries for consideration in the biannual LogoLounge book, now in preparation for its 13th volume. This is a collection of logos and case studies representing a best-in-class perspective of the branding industry. Gardner selects a panel of internationally


acclaimed designers to serve as a jury to distill the highest-ranking logos into the printed book, which houses 3,000 of their favorites. The process of creating it is as arduous as it might sound–there were 35,000 logos submitted for LogoLounge Book 12. This panel of ten judges scrutinize and review everything that has been submitted to the site since the last volume. Every logo is assigned a cumulative score and only the top-ranking logos are then highly categorized, given context, and featured in the book. “The book was a necessary aspect of this,


and books on logos can become outdated in time and many of the logos are designed two or three years before,” Gardner says. “The real reason for LogoLounge was to create a design tool that allows designers to see what other designers are doing in real time. They can upload a logo in the morning and someone in another country can


see it soon after. It allows people to see things as they are happening, and it has helped launch the careers of some big designers.” Back in 2003, Gardner was asked to write


an article on graphic design trends for Graphic Design USA, a free publication for design-industry professionals. Today, 19 editions later, that yearly article has become the Logo Trend Report, an industry must-read that lives on LogoLounge.com. Graphic Design USA still dedicates 10 to 12 pages on Gardner’s trend report each year, and it’s often picked up by influential media such as Forbes, Fortune, and Fast Company. The Logo Trend Report has also led to Gardner traveling around the world to talk about branding and identity design.


“The real reason for the LogoLounge was to create a design tool that allows designers to see what other designers are doing in real time.”


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