Headed by founder and president Bill Gardner, the annual LogoLounge report provides a comprehensive overview of the art of logo design, reviewing a global selection from the last 12 months and hinting at how this crucial aspect of design may be set to transform in the near future.

“As I ponder the logo selections we reviewed this year, I try to read the tea leaves, if you will, to see where we’re headed,” says Gardner in this year’s summary. “It’s not a straight path by any means. In fact, I’d liken it to a scavenger hunt where designers are searching for clues in various places, picking up hints along the way. They’re looking for direction because the idea of a traditional logo has changed dramatically in recent years.”

This change, he says, has not only manifested in the logos themselves, but also in the contextual elements that surround them: “Where the logo was once the centrepiece of a visual brand, it’s not uncommon to see it take a back seat to other elements in the graphic family.” Here, Gardner is referring to the patterns, textures, colours and animations that accompany a logo in branding and identities. These once secondary features have since come into focus, with designers leaning on them as signifiers of brand, rather than the traditional logo.

The last year has seen many brands even do away with logos entirely, instead looking to the humble wordmark to be the symbol for their businesses. “Some companies don’t see the value in having a separate mark to define who they are,” remarks Gardner. “If you can read the name, why have a logo?” Indeed, the wordmark has become fertile ground for experimentation, and plenty of designers have been finding new ways of playing with letterforms to create intriguing, dynamic and versatile designs.

Despite this, the logo persists, and Gardner reports that the last year has seen a rise in the use of trompe l’oeil in this area. One manifestation of this technique in particular has grown in popularity, and that is the ‘flat box’. It’s been done a thousand times before, but recently, designers have been keen to take this approach to the next level.

“In this report, we see innumerable logos with a familiar dimensional box perspective but rendered in the blackest of blacks or orangiest of oranges – or any single colour to hide highlights, shadows, or other dimensional clues,” says Gardner. “The dimensional shapes, whether cube-based or extruded in form, often benefit the viewer by the application of letterforms in the appropriate facets to provide orientation or context.” He points to the Toledo Museum of Art logo as a perfect example of this style.

Another key trend identified in the report is also the ‘bell bottoms’ wordmark. As the name would suggest, these wordmarks feature letterforms in which the ‘legs’ flare out like bell bottom jeans, bringing a dynamic feel to predominantly static designs, as well as adding an ever-popular retro flavour. “Thicks and thins in a variable line stroke that sweeps out to the most gradual serif that terminates in a really fat trunk,” explains Gardner. “Some have that whiplash signature blended with a bit of the free spirit from a prior nouveau-delic influence.”

Another trend in the report that’s worth mentioning is one named ‘Mix Stix’. It refers to the use of several clashing lines within a logo, creating a kind of controlled chaos that piques the viewer’s interest but also has the potential to provoke through its disorderly composition. Gardner provides the logos for The Nest and Ski Austria as examples, and it’s hard not to draw parallels between these designs and the kind found in outdoor brands like Arc’teryx, with its iconic sketch of a fossilised bird, or Gramicci, with its abstract running man.

Gardner says of these recent logos: “An order is found in mayhem, and the attributes of a clever bird and their mastery at feathering a home out of random twigs and flotsam are appreciated…. Embracing the occasional chaos of nature and reality can deliver an unmistakable fingerprint of a story.”

There are countless other trends to peruse in the report, from smiling designs linked to Japanese kawaii culture to “soft, pillow-like shapes” to digital-first RGB logos. “The constant evolution and experimentation will continue to push and pull logo design into new dimensions,” says Gardner, “and I can’t wait to see where we go next.”

View the full LogoLounge 2024 trend report here