Remember how graphic designers were told that spec work is the “new reality” and that in order to continue working in the graphic design industry, they’d have to “evolve or die“? That translated loosely to “be prepared to work for free, cause other people are“. True, most of this hyperbole came from web-based platforms that marketed themselves as “crowdsourcing” and logo design contest sites that had jumped on the “crowdsourcing” bandwagon, eager to ditch the vibe of, well, logo design contests. Still, pretty ominous words for the would-be graphic designer just entering the field, or the graphic design student currently working their ass off in art school. While many in the design community freaked out about the upcoming demise of their field, no-one (including yours truly) ever tried to figure out if the predictions were actually true. Or to analyze if the facts on the ground squared with the bold assumptions being made. Maybe it’s time we did.
We first wrote about this classic logo porn by French electro-pop duo Justice on The Factor! a few years back when it was first released. While taking care of some 
blog house-cleaning a few days ago, I discovered the original YouTube link for the DVNO video had gone dark, so I spent a bit looking for another. Found a good one too and figured it might be worth a revisit for folks who either haven’t seen the video before, or weren’t readers back then. So what’s the deal with DVNO? I was finally able to grab a quote (not that it clears much up):
Oscar weekend is upon us and the awards show will undoubtedly suck up the oxygen on the Tee Vee and the Internet for most of next week. As this is supposedly a logo design blog, not much to write about really, except wondering how Logorama, a cool little animated film that should interest graphic designers, will fare. If you don’t know what Logorama is, take a gander at this piece on the Logorama Oscar nomination we posted 
a few weeks ago. As of this morning, the video link included is still active, so you can watch the animated logo movie there too. For what it’s worth, we also took a look at the Oscar Best Picture nomination logos because, well, we’re just like that. And as that’s about as much logo design related stuff we can crowbar into Oscar news, we’ll move on…
Blog Fail: Just over a year ago I wrote a blog article called Why you should crowdsource your logo. If you don’t have enough time to read the piece (it’s long, wouldn’t blame you) let’s just say the link will lead you to a 5,585 word diatribe that’s a rabidly anti-crowdsourcing article into which I crowbarred as much snark as humanly possible (and then some) into 16 reasons why crowdsourcing a logo may be a very. Bad. Idea. 
Alas, at several times since then, the article has been twattered around Twitter, which is cool, by people who think it’s a pro-spec article, which it most certainly isn’t. All of this proves one of two things. Either many people on Twitter don’t read the links they’re twattering, or I need to step up the snark factor when I write my next anti-spec-work screed. The former is possible, the latter not so much. I’m not sure if it’s possible to squeeze more snark into any article before it becomes a black hole of sarcasm and irony, sucking the common sense from every article on this website.
This isn’t your typical “best logo design ever” Hall of Fame. Far from it. These logos haven’t been selected because they’re they’re the best, or even because they’re any good. Nope. These graphic elements and logos were hand-picked as being the most popular of all time. Not popular as in “I like that“. Popular as in “let’s use this“. Which when you get down to it, isn’t exactly a good thing, especially if we’re looking for an original logo. supposedly the point of the exercise itself. Accordingly, our version of a Hall of Fame features the most overused logos and graphic elements of all time. Designs that have been done to death, the most copied, knocked-off, reverse-engineered and generally abused so-called concepts in the history of ever. Without further ado, here’s the inductees:
A couple of weeks ago, we told you about the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) logo design contest for their Art Works project. Not going to regurgitate everything again, other than bullet pointing the bare bones. A government arts initiative that wanted to remind business people that “arts workers are real workers” who are “part of this country’s real economy“ 
and “earn salaries, support families, pay taxes, revitalizing towns, cities and neighborhoods.“ So they launched a logo design contest with a $25,000 prize. Not surprisingly, pushback was swift, with blog posts by designers and a strongly worded letter from the AIGA protesting the contest, all claiming that spec work devalued the graphic design industry and was, in fact, sending the exact opposite message that the logo was supposed to illustrate. The NEA responded thusly: “This RFP is open to anyone who enrolls in the Central Contractor Registration, and it has a streamlined submission process that essentially involves submitting one image, a three-page narrative that explains the thinking behind the proposed image and provides some basic information about the proposer. They also told us:
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