This months Creative Review has gone and done something rather ‘un-Creative-Review-ish’. They’ve listed ‘The Top 20 logos of all time‘. Seems the sort of thing more suited to second rate design blogs striving for the Digg thumbs up and essentially meaningless site traffic. But of course this is Creative Review; unabashed and brazen in the eyes of the thousands, a mecca of design and creative guidance—so I reckon they’ve done a decent job and few have complained.
Indeed they have done a good job. Besides a few of the regular candidates (British Rail, TATE, Apple, FedEx), there are a few curveballs such as Deutsche Bank, Woolmark and British Steel, which I found rather refreshing.
What grabbed my attention was not how iconic these logos are, nor their clever use of visual puns or gestalt design principles or effectiveness in suitably representing all their respective companies stand for.
It was their timelessness.
In most instances the logo marks had barely changed over the course of decades, through recessions and booms, through war and peace and huge paradigm shifts in technology, society and consumer perceptions and expectations.
Try finding a logo design book that doesn’t, at some point, mention Saul Bass. If you’re not sure who he is you will do by clicking that link.
Logo Design Love recently featured a selection of Saul’s finest logos over time, some dating back to the 50s. The lifespan of some of the examples is almost laughable, remaining almost identical after 40-50 years.
Now that is timeless design.
The Digital Dustbin
Sure the web’s still young, everyone keeps telling me, it’s a medium still in it’s infancy. Perhaps we’re still in a sort of ‘trial and error’ phase, and let’s face it, it’s a completely different kettle of fish to print and branding.
But how long does a website really last? A common rule of thumb for business sites tends to be around 2 years. Then it’s time to start anew, even get a new agency in to throw some fresh ideas on the table; “the old design’s getting a bit stale”, “we need a more contemporary look and feel”, “we think it’s time for ‘revolution’, not ‘evolution’”.
You get the idea. The tenders and briefs go out, always looking for the same thing—modern, contemporary, ‘more in-sync with today’s digital landscape’, and the proposals pour in from all the eager agencies reckoning they’ve got the perfect solution to reinvigorate your brand online. Shit, we’re all guilty of it, especially designers—we get bored of our work all to quickly and rush to create something new and ‘fresh’.
Designs, sometimes great designs, are simply thrown away. Lost to the annals of online yesteryear.
So whose fault is it? Designers? Clients? The industry?
Are designers not striving hard enough to create digital designs that stand the test of time, that respond and evolve within themselves—future proof, bucking trends and pioneering long-lasting appeal and usefulness?
If Creative Review were to feature a list of the top 20 websites of all time, what would we find in there? I’d like to think it would be less your jQuery-swathed flashy sites boasting every feature on Smashing Magazine’s ‘Web Design Trends for 2011′ article. Christ, I fucking hate those lists.
What about your Googles (obvious, I know), Wikipedias, IMDBs and Amazons etc. Websites that’ve barely changed in 10 years because for the most part they were done right the first time around. Besides a few tweaks and small steps of evolution of time, the main look and feel, layout, colour scheme, typography and tone of voice of such websites has truly stood the test of time, in an online sense.
Is this not something we should be working harder towards when we design? Not just impressing the client, winning the pitch or the award or building something that screams ‘Look at me—I know CSS3 and jQuery!’, but a standard of interface, user experience and visual design that will be as relevant in 5 years as it is now?
Is it really an issue?
Maybe that’s not the point. Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree. Is this a vicious cycle of carelessness and laziness in design or is it a product of the environment? In the 60s a logo had to be right, a companies branding had to be perfected before the first print run, because to change something later on was such a massive expense.
Online, such expense has been more or less erased. New palettes, typographical arrangements, imagery and visual motifs can be changed and removed at the drop of a hat. Whether or not this is a good or bad thing is something could be debated endlessly.
I’m going to take a middle of the road view; the disposability of digital design is both a curse and a blessing. It provides opportunities to create and improve at a faster rate, however this shouldn’t distract us from taking the time to create the best possible work we can in the first place.
The ‘we can always change it later’ mindset must be handled with respect.
Very interesting and, I fear, all too common. My own 4p worth would be a that lot of the disposability of online design seems to be caused by:
1) A design concept that’s based around achieving a particular visual effect rather than fulfilling a purpose. Those timeless sites you mentioned – Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, IMDB – are all functionality-driven and purpose-oriented: sell people books, help people find stuff online etc. Whereas website designs that are over-ruled and over-written I think tend to be much more nebulously based on reflecting something that exists elsewhere – a product, an offline campaign, a brand identity, something that isn’t based on what the user of the website wants to actually *do* when they get there, anyhow.
2) The folks who decide when a website looks stale or tired or in need of a refresh tend to be firmly of a ‘design for visual effect’ mind-set rather than a ‘design for purpose’ mind-set. They’re motivated by the shiny, not the solid.
In the industry I currently work in – book publishing – the second mind-set is all-too prevalent: websites are commissioned and I’m told they have to be based on the look of a particular cover style – which then changes (anything from a few months to a couple of years later) when the author in question decides to write something else, or their editor decides it’s time for a “fresh new look”, or the wind blows south-by-southwesterly across the Thames…
My own response is to try to encourage more series-neutral designs – clean, navigable, usable – with the aim of actually providing that author’s readers with a source of reliable information, a platform for interaction with the reader, easily-accessible excerpts from the author’s work – purpose-oriented stuff.
The jury’s still out on the results of my efforts…
Some good questions, Nathan.
Any resource showing “top websites” or the like will definitely have Google in there. Probably at number one (not just for the status of the brand and its usefulness, but mainly for the design and ease of use — focusing all its effort on giving the user what s/he came for).
Talking of refreshes, it’s time Logo Design Love was simplified.
P.s., where’s the “subscribe to comments” plugin?
Good to see you’re writing again Nathan.
I’d like to see lists of the “top 20 websites” as voted by people from different industries, demographics and geographic areas. From those lists, I’m sure there would be a common few between the lists and these sites wpuld be worthy of their votes if they were voted on for different reasons.
Great points there.
Darren—so we’re looking at a lack of form following function? I think another problem is the idea of how a website should look, based by and large on what most other websites look like. Sure, there are best practices and rules of thumb for a reason, such as the positioning of logos and navigation etc, but perhaps the preconceived notions of how a blog, a magazine site, a social networking or video sharing website should be formatted and styled cloud our ability to really design for the task at hand?
David—It’s a slightly ironic article considering I’ve just ‘redesigned’ this website, but I wanted to scale it right back to focus on the content, getting rid of all the clutter. I’ll see how it goes.
Abrishca—it’s good to be writing again, shame I stopped for so long. You’d certainly have to look at a wide range of demographics to get any sort of unbiased opinion.
Isn’t it possible that the fact that websites like google, amazon etc. haven’t changed is because they are so popular that they have set the standard for how people expect websites to work.
I think it’s more a case of there being a lack of function – or rather, a lack of ‘purpose’, perhaps – at the heart of the design process. Again I can only speak from my experience, but time after time, I’m presented with project briefs that include reams on the “look and feel” of the website, but very little at all on the point of the website: what’s the site supposed to *do*, what *problem* is it meant to solve, what *story* is it supposed to tell?
And then, six months later, the “look and feel” criteria change and so the website has to change – at which point I’m re-briefed with a different set of colour-scheme, mood and atmosphere-related keywords, another chunk of budget is spent and still the essential purpose of the site isn’t addressed in any meaningful way.
It’s all just a tiny bit frustrating, I have to admit… but hey, it’s Friday. Nearly beer o’clock