Future Proofing and Logo Trends

I discovered a great piece by logolounge.com where they highlighted logo trends in 2014. It was interesting to see how familiar some of these images were and how the lounge choose to group them. Couplings like "Geo Faces," and "Flat Wires" were a few that I spotted with ease. Others like "Waves," and "Pompoms" hadn't occurred to me before. It all begs the question: what makes a trend a trend? Word tools define it as a direction towards which things are changing. These graphics, then, should be considered as indicators of future work and of popular acceptance. Culture is a moving target and it is impossible to fully capture the essence of a time or place. But leaders must be willing to reach forward into time in order to protect their investment. We often call this reach future proofing: where concepts are designed for future audiences in order to preserve their relevance over time.

Future Proofing: concepts are designed for future audiences in order to preserve relevance over time.

In the case of these logos, you might say that they are future proofed because they are designed toward changing themes. But what about your own work? Are you creating things with the future in mind? Does that even matter for your project? A ten year program might suffer from a poor choice in font, color, or language. But an event flyer, designated for one time use, might benefit from such trending elements.

The best way to look forward is to look back. What types of looks or language have stood the test of time? It is ironic that the best future proofing you may do is in researching the history of your field. We fail to recognize that we are already living in the future of yesterday. Granted, it takes an abstract mind to apply future changes based on past chronicles.

We fail to recognize that we are already living in the future of yesterday.

These logos are evidence that nothing is new. Below you will see no real novel take on the logo, but a combination of ideas to represent modern organizations. By combining the best ideas of the past you may find a novel path toward the future and guarantee the ongoing impact of your work.