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.]