The Good, the Flat, and the Ugly

On this episode, tired of the usual Twitter-Tumblr tempest over new logos like Instagram’s flattened rainbow gradient camera, Michael and Jessica dissect the tiresome pattern of invective and hyperbole that greets them.

Following the template of the Breaking News Consumer’s Handbooks from the public radio show On The Media, which help listeners cut through the noise around terrorist attacks and election polls, here is the start of Design Observer’s Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook: New Logo edition. 

1. Don’t panic. No need to hoard groceries.
2. The people who condemn it will be louder and more extreme than people are okay with it.
3. Someone will post tips on how to get the old one back.
4. Someone will create a petition to revert to the old logo.
5. Someone will say that their 5-year-old could do that.
6. Someone will say it looks like a human body part.
7. Someone will say it looks too much like somebody else’s logo, either another big brand of a forgotten Slovenian company from before the war.
8. The video explaining the new logo will also be ridiculed.
9. A month from now, most people will forget the old logo.

What else are we missing? Leave a comment, or let us know on Facebook or Twitter. 

Later, Jessica talks about how she wrote Design: The Invention of Desire, mostly at the kitchen table of her apartment in Paris,

Also mentioned:

• Instagram Head of Design Ian Spalter explains the new logo
• Christoph Niemann, How to Make a Conceptual Illustration
• Paul Ford on the new brutalism
• Tom Vanderbilt, You Might Also Like
• Maddy Kramer’s Woman Cards
• Carrie Brownstein on the conference call and The New Yorker’s Uninvent This series
• Ian Bogost tries out the Freewrite (ne Hemingwrite)
• Betsy Lerner, The Bridge Ladies

Thanks to Yale University Press for sponsoring this episode. 

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