This is a swoosh. This is a swoosh. Whether you call it an arch, swish, swirl
or swoosh, this visual element is the last great cliché of 20th century logo design. In September 2020, intel removed the iconic
swoosh from their brand, effectively killing one of the last major examples in public consciousness. So where did this cliché come from and is
it at long last dead? [Music]
The world’s favourite swoosh was designed in 1971 by Carolyn Davidson. Nike’s tick-mark swoosh is truly a best-case
scenario. Appropriately, it connotes the dynamic movement
of sports – and was given proportions that would work well on a shoe. Also, it was different from what other brands
in footwear were doing at the time. Still there is nothing inherently interesting
or great about the swoosh itself. The reason Nike’s brand became so iconic
is years of expensive marketing, and the reflected glory of the teams and athletes it has associated
itself with over the decades. Another field where the swoosh makes sense
is aeronautics. Boeing’s logo and the Nasa Meatball (as
awkward as it is), are completely justified in using an orbital swoosh. But in the late 1990’s we started to see
a new breed of swoosh logo – one devoid of any meaningful connection to the companies
they were for. I believe two major factors laid the foundation
for this trend… [Music]
Desktop publishing was a turning point in the de-professionalisation of design. Well into the 1980s, it was simply not possible
to set up as a solo designer, due to the mechanical and technical processes involved in making
high fidelity artwork. Digital tools changed that, and in the 90s,
features like 16-bit colour monitors, larger, cheaper hard drives and more powerful processing
finally meant that graphics software could run on a high-end consumer PC. Packages like CorelDraw and Macromedia Freehand
were accessibly priced, and the cottage industry of desktop publishers – both with and without
a formal education in graphic design – flourished through the 1990s. ♬ Take a spin, now you're in with the techno
set! You're going surfing on the internet! ♬
Simultaneously, the dot com bubble starting in the late 90s until the crash of 2002 gave
birth to our modern concept of the startup. This created a surge of thousands of new companies,
all looking for logos on a shoestring budget, with the additional twist that many of these
companies had only the faintest whiff of an idea behind them. Startups today can seem built on a premise
scribbled on the back of a napkin, but compared to the original dot coms, those might as well
be blueprints for the Burj Khalifa. We’re talking about the early dial-up days
of the internet, and business plans often amounted to a domain name, a few buzzwords
and some handwaving. So how does a self-taught desktop publisher
in 1998 make a logo for a company that barely knows its own value proposition? Enter: the millennium swoosh. You don’t need a fancy design education
to do this, or this, or this. Just put a swoosh on it. And boy howdy, did they. From there, the swoosh entered the cultural
zeitgeist and its association with these dot com startups, made it a visual shorthand for
injecting a new, youthful energy. Soon, established brands began co-opting the
style, some more successfully than others. Chances are, if a major brand added a swoosh
to their logo, a rebranding took place sometime between 1995 if they were ahead of the curve,
and 2005 if they were behind the times. Today, it’s rare to see a major global brand
using it – though a few vestiges still remain – Burger King, Head and Shoulders, and until
recently, intel. Let’s examine two remaining major brands
to see how the swoosh can be used for good, or for ill. Amazon launched in 1994 with a very different
logo from what we see today. It was only in 2000, after multiple iterations,
that they introduced the current logo designed by Turner Duckworth. Let’s break down what Amazon’s swoosh
has going for it that most don’t… Amazon calls itself the everything store,
where you can buy everything from a to z. The swoosh arrow of the amazon logo literally
connects a to z. Visual wit is similar to wordplay. Just like a homographic pun allows for two
simultaneous meanings from the same phrase, this logo features the visual equivalent. Not only is the swoosh in this logo an arrow,
but it’s also a smile. If the arrow head were solid, or changed in
form, this dual meaning would vanish. This logo clearly shows care and effort. The letterforms are based on Officina Sans
– used in the logo which preceded this version. This lowercase “a” has a spur, the typographic
term for this small tail. The logo has been carefully constructed to
create one smooth, continuous arc originating at the base of the spur. The “z” also has been altered to create
clear-space around the arrowhead, and the stem at the base has been arched to match
that line. Isolated by itself, it looks very odd, but
it fits together perfectly within the logo. These are three elements all contribute to
a successful logo. You don’t necessarily need all three – Nike’s
logo for example isn’t particularly witty or meaningful, but it is well-executed. The sad thing about most swoosh logos is that
they’re not any of these things. They’re usually meaningless, boring and
lazy. If you’re unfamiliar, with Capital One,
this is no small-time business. This is a bank with operations across multiple
countries, and a place in the top quarter of the Fortune 500. So what is this swoosh doing here? Is it relevant to what they do? No. Is it interesting? No. Is it well executed? [Speechless reaction.] Visually it throws the balance of the logo
off, which was already suffering under the weight of its awkward typography. Now this red boomerang is putting visual weight
on the righthand side. The swoosh also strikes through the “O”
in One, but because it clearly would have been distracting and made it illegible, they’ve
exploded it and removed the part which would be inside the O’s internal negative space. This logo could have been less awful with
the swoosh over the name, but would have looked too similar to their rival, citibank. Fun fact: The founder and CEO of Capital One,
is also a part owner of the Washington Capitals hockey team. In fact, he temporarily changed the logo on
their homepage in tribute when the team made the Stanley Cup in 2018. Which proves that: 1) the logo still had room
to get even worse, 2) that the only connection between this bank and this swoosh is the CEO’s
love of hockey. Which is completely, pucking stupid. [Swoosh sound]
The worst thing about this logo is that it was designed in 2008. Well past the point of where the swoosh had
become cliché. [Music]
So, is the swoosh dead? If only things were that simple. It’s safe to say that its moment in the
big leagues is over. Major companies with big branding budgets
are savvy enough to know that the swoosh feels dated. You’re more likely to see it used by small
businesses with no budget for a unique logo, and fair play – branding is not the number
one concern for every business. The swoosh requires no effort or skill to
throw together, so it’s a common solution in logo templates and on lowest common denominator
marketplaces like 99designs. The swoosh flourished because of its ambiguity. It makes a vague gesture toward meaning, without
any specificity. You can justify its usage with similarly vague
adjectives – dynamic, energetic, vibrant – but under scrutiny, it falls flat. It’s a graphical equivalent to filler text. Your eye just kind of glances over it like
a stone, skimming across a pond. For a graphic designer, seeing a swoosh logo
is just seeing a missed opportunity to say something. Which is why I rated swoosh logos so poorly
in my logo roundups. For a local accountant or dentist, a swoosh
logo says: nothing to see here, just a generic logo. Fine! I don’t pick my dentist by the quality of
their branding. But for municipal institutions, a generic
swoosh logo says: we have nothing of value. No heritage, no history. Nothing to be proud of. We have nothing worth celebrating here. And that’s a tragedy that is all too common. There is a solution to this, but that’s
a video for another day. I hope you enjoyed this little video on the
history of the swoosh logo, and why I’m glad to see the back of this trend. Please give it a thumb if you enjoyed it – subscribe
for more geeky dives into the world of design. My name is Linus, thanks as always for watching
and I’ll see you in a future video. [Swoosh: there it is. Swoosh: there it is.]
