Open up your mind and say, ahh...

I recently watched the 1966 movie Blow-Up. As the movie trailer warns, director Michelangelo Antonioni’s “camera never flinches” from the “dazzle and the madness of London today!” It’s a great movie that weaves the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll scene of the mid-1960s into the life of a “wild” fashion photographer. These were the holy trinity of shocking topics of the day, but the movie seems tame and quaint by today’s standards. Which leads one to ask–does anything shock us anymore?

People want to feel alive. We want to have new experiences and see things that surprise, inspire, or yes, even shock us a little. But we live in an Internet-exposed world that gives us all we want, raw and in real time, and we have an “I’ve seen it all before” attitude about everything. Yet companies are more cautious in this politically correct, overly litigious, and socially enabled environment. According to Trendwatching.com, consumers are “able to handle much more honest conversations, more daring innovations, more quirky flavors, more risqué experiences–these consumers increasingly appreciate brands that push the boundaries.” So companies had better figure out how to let their brands thrive in today’s world.

Just where is that boundary, and just how daring are today’s marketers? How do they straddle that fine line between engaging and offending? What happens when the unreasonable objections of rampant political correctness threaten to stifle their best ideas and creative content? Here are a few guideposts to follow in searching for ideas in advertising that could break through.

Understand that it’s all relative: What is offensive to me might make you laugh. What works with a male audience might be way off the mark for women. Regions, religions, and races all possess socially acceptable norms. Because the Internet makes everything accessible to everyone all the time, whatever you do–anything you do–that is remotely controversial will be criticized by someone. Get used to it. You can’t be universally loved and hope to shock people. They don’t go hand in hand. Find the courage to speak to your consumers in a way they will love and care less about what the “others” will say about your brand. See what K-Swiss’ “CEO” Kenny Powers says.

Give them a surprise rather than a shock: Shock makes us stop. Surprise makes us think. Brands need to build relationships that are lasting. Just shocking someone doesn’t mean they will think about or engage with your brand. For a brand to engage, quite often that means getting them to rethink what role the brand could play in their lives. If you do things that are unexpected, fresh, and surprising for your brand, your consumers will start thinking about you in a different light. How best to be surprising? Do or say that thing you always dream of and have never dared express. Good advice in both marketing and life. (See Ally Bank.)

Let your audience help: I just saw a play in New York called Sleep No More, a wildly inventive and brave attempt to create a theatrical experience that brought the audience into a voyeuristic partnership with the actors. We became part of the show, and once you realize that you’re part of the experience, you become less critical because you feel some level of ownership. Brands need to do that same thing. Have the consumers contribute ideas and content to the brand’s story, and its relevance and appropriateness become self-regulating. (See Doritos.)

Lighten up: Companies are way too serious and afraid. I get it. Anything that is different, shocking, or surprising can create extra work and add some risk to the equation. Anything interesting you want to do with your brand will have corporate detractors. Fear drives too many corporations. But your consumers will applaud you for taking a risk, sharing a laugh, being brutally honest about the world in which your brand lives. To do something mildly interesting, let alone shocking, often takes too much effort and the best ideas die before they see the light of day. Have courage, lighten up, and do something surprising. (See Domino’s.)

Don’t be mean-spirited: It’s easy to be shocking at someone’s expense. Don’t. (See Groupon’s much-reviled Tibet ad.)

Realize that candor can be shocking: There is a famous ad by the explorer Ernest Shackleton that says, “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.” Pretty shocking. But completely honest. Marketers get a bad rap (and often deservingly so) for trying to overspin their message. Be straight with your audience. Tell them what you want from them. In an over-hyped world, they will appreciate the candor, and you might just get better results. (See DIRECTV.)

Give it the family test: Your grandmother knows (the cool one on your mother’s side). Your kid knows (the smart one who actually does her homework). And your spouse knows (they always do). If you can’t share your idea or work with your family, it’s probably over the line. I have yet to find something that shocks my kids. Buckle up; when the younger generations take control, things will get pretty exciting.

I love brands that always choose to push the boundaries in ways true to their soul. These brands make me laugh, think, and feel a little uncomfortable at times–and I respect them for their courage and conviction, even if I don’t always agree with them.

Image: Flickr user Thomas Dongga

It’s been a good year at Parker Brothers Choppers, the folks who made a replica of the Tron Light Cycle and a grown-up version of the Green Machine. They’ve got a reality TV show premiering on the SyFy Network in April, and both the Light Cycle and Green Machine made it into the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog.

Now, just in time for Christmas, they’re taking orders for an all-new, all-electric bike. Like the Tron Light Cycle, Parker Brothers’ latest creation is another nod to designer Daniel Simon, the former VW designer and futurist who also penned the Light Cycles for Tron: Legacy.

This time, it’s Simon’s Detonator concept that’s been put in three dimensions. It’s got a 30-inch front wheel and dual 96 volt electric motors in the hub of the 27 inch rear wheel. The e-bike is powered by lithium-ion batteries, and charges in an hour when plugged into a 110 volt outlet. Parker Brothers estimates the bike has a 80-100 mile range when fully charged, and it’s been bench tested to a 120 mph top speed.

“It is not the easiest bike to ride, but at 11.5 feet long it’s still rideable and fast as well,” said Jeff Halverson, operations manager at Parker Brothers.”

Well, it’s rideable if you’ve got the cash. The Detonator is on sale to customers in the US, Europe and Saudi Arabia for the cool sum of $100,000.

Photo: Karen Parker, Parker Brothers Choppers

I was just logging off to go to bed, and I ended up reading this great post by DJ Coffman, about how to create a pitch with a hook. He asked, at the end, if we’d read the comic based on the pitch. I wrote that I might, but that what I found interesting was that the “until” was missing. Now, the weird thing is, I didn’t even realize that I thought like that, until I read DJ’s post, and then I didn’t realize that I even knew about the “until” ..um…until that moment.

What is the Until?

Movies and most fictional stories have a reasonably similar plot projection that goes like this:

Everything was normal UNTIL it wasn’t.

That’s it. That’s the plot nugget. Let me show it to you with the examples I gave to DJ in his comments section (and do go check out his cool project).

Marlin and Nemo lived happily in their reef UNTIL Nemo got lost during a school trip.

Wall-E lived happily in his junkyard, finding old junk to treasure UNTIL Eva showed up.

Bob and Helen Parr lived secretly with their children, UNTIL Bob had to go and have a midlife crisis.

See? It’s the UNTIL that makes the story.

Real Life is Rarely Like Fiction

You see, most of us try very hard to cling to that first half of the plot. Most of us try really hard to keep things the way they’ve always been. But you can’t do that in fiction. The Incredibles would be pretty boring if Bob just worked at his insurance job all day. Wall-E would be interesting for about 8 minutes if all he did was collect garbage. Finding Nemo happens every day inside of fishbowls.

But You Could Embrace the Until

What if getting laid off was your Until? Erik Proulx made an entire movement out of that idea with The Lemonade Movie.

What if a break-up brings you to your until?

What if a change of faith, a sickness, the discovery of a new technology brings you to your until?

You’ll Never Know, Unless…

Most of us ward off our “untils,” but what if you didn’t? What would life be like? How would you see the world, if you were at least open to the possibilities of your until?

What do you think?

There are tons of fun ways to personalize your iPad, but one of our favorites (and one of the cheapest) is a decal for the device’s back. Trust us, there are some really fun and creative stickers out there.

Following on from our original gallery of iPad decals, we’ve found 10 more designs available on Etsy that we think are pretty darn cool.

Take a look through our hand-picked selection of 10 great decals and let us know in the comments below your faves, or any other decals you can recommend.

We use social media tools for different purposes. We might use it for distribution of media, for marketing, for customer service, for promotion, for communication, and most likely, for all of the above. How you use it depends on your end goals, obviously. But most times, people are being thrust into using social media without really knowing what the goals are, and without knowing what kind of workflow should accompany the use of the tool. Instead, they swing by Facebook to see if anyone commented on the wall update, and they visit Twitter to reply to a few things, retweet a few other things, and they end up feeling like they’re not sure why they’re doing this, let alone how it’s going to serve the cause.

For the sake of this post, we’ll talk about the marketing aspects mostly. Oh, and this is just PART 1: AWARENESS AND CAPTURE. Depending on how it’s received, I’ll add more.

Here are some thoughts on developing social media workflows (including the first building blocks).

Goals First

Where most people get tripped up with social media is that they don’t have solid and clear goals in mind. Goals for using social media for your business can be varied. A few sample goals:

• Increase subscribers to our newsletter by __%.
• Increase sales.
• Promote community engagement (measured by comments and other touches).
• Improve awareness (measured by site visits or video views or similar, and better still, next actions taken).
• Gather customer feedback for product and service enhancement/improvement.

You’ll note that the goals listed above also have tangible measurements attached to them. Showing up in social media to dip your toes in the pool isn’t all that useful. It’s fun and it might prove that you’re using all the cool kid toys, but if you’re not building on something tangible, then there’s nothing worth doing. Caveat to that: it’s okay to not understand how you’re going to achieve these goals right out of the gate. Part of the process is to actually understand the medium and figure out how to best use it.

Thinking in Blocks

If you and I were drawing this together on a white board, or using post-its and an easel, we’d be drawing blocks. The blocks would be like recipe elements, or like bits of code, or like building blocks for kids. I’m a visual thinker, and I think it helps the process. Because I’m too lazy, it’s up to you to get out some sticky notes and make some blocks. Everything below this should be a block to consider.

Awareness

Unless your goal is to support and satisfy an existing organization (for instance, if you’re an association or if this is an internal project), the next thing you’ll want to work on is understanding how to raise awareness of your project. Creating amazing and compelling content is excellent, unless no one sees it. Awareness is tricky these days. YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world, and it serves billions of video views every year. That sounds promising until you realize that means you’re competing with billions of other videos, so just putting up a video there won’t help. This will be the problem with most every project you work on.

To gain awareness, you’ll have to find the people you need to target. To do that, you’ll need to understand the landscape.

Landscape

If I were building something to accomplish these goals, I’d first need to understand the landscape and which tools I’d want to use. For instance, if you’re doing something heavily B2B, there might not be a lot of value in hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, and maybe not even LinkedIn. Acquisition of new people would be the first and foremost thing to consider in that case, actually. If your product faces consumers, then you know that you might want to approach them on a series of mediums. Finding people could be as using a service like Rapleaf or Flowtown. You’ll note something (and we’ll talk about this more): these services all run on email as the hinge. You’ll note that email addresses are the true coin of the realm of understanding and using social media, at least from a marketing perspective.

Figuring out the landscape and the awareness are probably the first two blocks in any workflow, in my mind, or else you’re kind of wasting your effort.

Database

Once you know how you’re going to tackle awareness, and once you have a sense of the landscape where you intend to find people to appreciate and admire your projects, you’ll want a way to capture information about them and do something of value with it. You need some kind of database. If you’re a larger company, then you’re going to want to integrate these people into your existing CRM. Products like Salesforce already have spots to put people’s social media identities. ACT might, as well. I know that Batchbook has that built right in. What you’re looking to create in your database is a kind of Rosetta Stone of people’s social map. So, once you’ve done your work, you might have my Twitter account, my Facebook account, my LinkedIn account, my YouTube account and whatever matters to you.

You’ll obviously also want to store some information that you glean from those channels. Perhaps on YouTube, you’ll note that my daughter does product reviews with me, and maybe you sell a kid’s product. You’ll note that on Twitter, I talk about hip hop, and maybe that will be of value to you. Who knows? But salespeople understand the value of such information. The point is, that without a database, you’re just making stuff and setting it free on the world.

Capture

If you’re looking to build awareness and you’re looking to do something with it, you’ll need to think in terms of capturing these new potential leads so that you can understand which of them can be turned into prospects. Remember that not everyone who interacts with you is a lead. Not everyone who watches your video is a lead. Remember that you have to do some good community work to convert any of these people into buyers and that their response to your efforts to engage doesn’t mean that they want to buy. (Please repeat this over and over to eager salespeople and hungry marketers.)

Just the same, we have to do some things to seek out and find people to add to our database.

Listening is a great capture. If you learn how to grow bigger ears, the results of such efforts will help you find people via the listening channel. As people start voicing their needs, they aren’t exactly saying your name every time, so you might have to work on finding what phrases and words people will use that identify what you sell. Note: it’s rarely what you put on your marketing materials (though maybe it should be?).

Creating good media is a great way to seek capture. For instance, if you write a really useful newsletter, people will sign up. If you create free webinars, people will sign up. These aren’t immediately prospects, but they are at least leads that you can run down. With a social media perspective to capture, perhaps what you do after gathering up these new email addresses is you run them through RapLeaf of Flowtown and find out where these people spend time online. From that, you might learn a bit more about what these people are into and how that might apply to determining if they’re a useful prospect, and also possibly helping you better understand how to market to them and eventually sell them your product or service.

Capture is one of the steps that I feel most people miss with social media workflows. They create interesting stuff and then don’t do much to try and build a follow-on step, OR they go for “sale” as the next step. In most workflows offline, sale is the fourth or fifth action. I never understood why people thought it would be truncated online.

Here Endeth Part One

The awareness and capture elements of a social media workflow are something that will take some time to ingest and work through. I think we’ll stop here and see what comes of this. If you find it interesting, please comment. If you disagree or want to rebut, by all means, please do. These are just some serving suggestions. If you want to write your own version of the article with some more steps, by all means, please do, and consider linking back to this post.

That’s the beauty of this stuff. We can all collaborate and contribute. What say you?

I pay attention to emerging technology and trends on a daily basis. While I track many networks, tools, and services, I take the time to share those that appear to gain traction or offer interesting prospects for tomorrow’s business, today.

Two such services are quickly becoming the darlings of the blogosphere and brands alike, Instagram and Quora. Not a day passes us by where someone isn’t analyzing Instagram’s rise to imaging stardom or Quora’s domination of social engagement around questions and answers. Did the world need another imaging application? Probably not. Do consumers need another question and answer site? Hardly. Instagram and Quora, however, appear to have executed a “thin edge of the wedge” strategy, which is akin to the “tip of the spear” strategy where the services attack a small problem first and then expand once traction and momentum are underway.

Instagram wasn’t the first service to help you share pictures from your mobile device to your social graph. Services such as Twitpic and yfrog connected pictures to the Twitter stream. With Facebook’s mobile app, users could simply upload pictures to their Wall. Instagram however, solved two small challenges with an all-in-one app. It became the focal point of visual sharing. Rather than take a picture and then upload socially through a separate service, Instagram became the dashboard for capturing, editing, and sharing the image without leaving the app. And, Instagram served as an integrated distribution network connecting users to their respective egosystem including, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, Facebook, and Foursquare. The answer to what’s next lies in the company’s business plan, most likely described as the wedge strategy. Or, the answer could already exist in Quora, the social Q&A network.

Quora seems to baffle the sharpest of the pundits. Essentially it is a question and answer network, not unlike Yahoo Answers or Mahalo Answers. But, the fledgling service solved a couple of problems very well that existing solutions and budding entrepreneurs neglected to see. Much in the same way Foursquare applied game mechanics into geolocation and Facebook introduced the social effect into the News Feed, Quora is designed to engage, challenge, educate and reward its users. But that’s not all. The foundation for the questions and answers are driven by a hierarchy and social ranking, much like Twitter and blogs. The number of followers, following and total mentions is prominent for all to see and judge.

Quora evokes the essence of social capitalism and in the process, introduced a new category of content creators. The system was initially closed, and through a strategic round of private beta invitations, the early rounds of users such as digerati, silicon valley elite, bloggers, celebrities, et al, set the stage for exclusivity as well as focus. Those on the outside wanted in and those on the inside desired recognition. I am not name dropping, but I am making a point. I was introduced to Quora by Ashton Kutcher. And, when I sat down recently to discuss Quora with uber blogger Robert Scoble, his response was as telling as it was validating, Quora is hot because, “all of the cool kids are using it.”

The thin wedge of Quora’s strategy may already have traveled further from the left to the right than Instagram. As new users are invited into Quora, the game mechanics seem to only grow in prominence. People are investing in asking and more so, answering questions to boost social capital in an uncharted and unconquered network where the reward is distinction and stature.

Are Businesses Using Instagram and Quora to #Engage?

If it’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years of studying social media, business, and the pursuit of influence, it’s that we are competing for the moment in order to earn and maintain a semblance of relevance. For businesses struggling to gain traction through Likes, RT’s, comments, clicks, friend and follower counts, the moment for which we compete, never really comes. It is perpetual.

The reality is this, Quora and Instagram are inviting participation among brands as they experiment in earning relevance.

#Quora

While brands are currently not invited to the Quora party, listening and monitoring are important within Quora if it is indeed where your community is asking and answering questions. Like Yahoo Answers and Mahalo Answers, answers to brand related questions are already populating the top of search results in Google.

Brands, if possible, can follow topics related not only to their company, but also their markets. For example, there are hundreds of questions related to Apple in Quora right now, 335 of which are open. If we take a subset of Apple’s business and follow the topic around “tablets,” we would see that our time (defined by any number of tablet manufactures) would yield a great deal of insight.

But why Quora? Robert Scoble eluded to the value of the network earlier. The community as it exists today is rich with influencers. Their perspective is worthy of attention. If for nothing else, insight into the perception and experiences of noteworthy individuals can help inspire future experiences through adaptation.

By the way, if you want to continue the conversation on this topic, it should come as no surprise, that a question already exists…and it’s awaiting your response.

#Instagram

On the other hand, Instagram is already attracting brands into the popular mobile imaging network to help visualize their stories. In November of 2010, National Geographic was amongst the first to demonstrate how a brand’s image could quite literally tie to images within a mobile photo sharing  network bound by imagery.

Since then, CNN, Grammys, NPR, NBC News, Playboy, and Pepsi signed up for Instagram. When Starbucks introduced its new logo recently, the company did not wish to repeat the Gap’s social backlash. Instead, Starbucks shared the logo across the social Web, Instagram included, to seek feedback.

NPR uses Instagram to not only extend the reach of its stories, but also tell stories through modern form of photojournalism. In fact, media certainly has a play here and in any other active imaging network.

To learn more about brands using Instragram, you might want to watch this thread as it unfolds on, you guessed it, Quora.

We’re early on both fronts, but these trends are inciting notable activity on both sides of the brand equation. It’s not just businesses that gain from the intelligence and community within each network, media organizations can also keep their fingers on the pulse of not just new, but also emerging networks that can modernize and reinvigorate news distribution networks.

The networks that gain greatest prominence in these times are those that people choose to support. As such, it is up to businesses and organizations with a story to tell and those with true intentions of community to survey the horizons for the next opportunity to earn relevance.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Once upon a time if you wanted to use your phone hands-free you were forced to look like an extra from Star Trek with an unwieldy earpiece hanging from your head. However, there are now some seriously sleek options out there.

We’ve hand-picked five classy Bluetooth headsets that will keep you connected on the go, without attracting unwanted attention from the Style Police.

Have a look below for our quintet of cool cellphone headsets, and let us know in the comments which ones you wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen wearing out and about.

1. Plantronics Discovery 975

Gorgeously minimal, Plantronics’ Discovery 975 is ideal for anyone looking for a particularly elegant solution for wireless cellphone conversations. Striking in its simplicity, the 975 is more than just good looking — its carry case conveniently charges the earpiece, a clever design that means you can juice up on the go.

Cost: $129.99

2. Motorola Oasis

Boasting all day comfort, the Oasis is no slouch in the looks department, with a modern black and chrome finish and a tidy, behind-the-ear design. Motorola claims the Oasis is the lightest headset available, but it still manages to pack in voice prompt commands, dual-mics for noise cancellation and the ability to pair with two Bluetooth devices at the same time.

Cost: $79.99

3. Jawbone Icon

Jawbone makes hip headsets for the cool kids. The Icon is the company’s flagship model (in Jawbone’s words, “simply the best friggin’ headset on the planet”). It’s available in 10 unique styles, all of which are cool and contemporary. The gadget also comes with seven different earbud options, so it’s safe to say you’ll almost certainly find a combination to suit your taste.

Cost: $99

4. BlueAnt Q2

With a classic design, the Q2’s simple good looks are backed up by some serious technology. This high-end headset won’t draw unnecessary attention to itself, yet it will offer you comprehensive voice recognition commands and text-to-speech technology that announces the names of incoming callers and reads aloud SMS messages. You can get all of that wonderful Star Trek tech with none of its clunky looks.

Cost: $129.99

5. Jabra Stone

Arguably the most dramatic design on this list, Jabra’s Stone headset is about as far removed from your standard wireless Bluetooth accessory as you can get. The Stone boasts cool, curvaceous looks, as well as a portable charging unit that the headset slots neatly into, and it is available in both black and white. If you want to stand out from the crowd, the Stone is a rocking option for you.

Cost: $129.99

Designing and critiquing logos for web-based companies and startups is a pursuit of endless fascination for many of us. Over the years, we’ve seen enough startups come and go (and rebrand and merge) to fill a volume with how and how not to develop and execute a logo for a web company.

We’ve also picked up some knowledge about trends in this field. Some of the trends are good; others, regrettable. Others still are simply overused, which is the saddest scenario of them all. We hate to see a good design trick or typeface grow hackneyed over the course of a few months, but it happens all the time, unfortunately.

In this article, we’ve identified 11 trends in web company logo design. Hopefully, you’ll see a few here that apply to the startups and web apps we write about every day. And of course, we’ve included some handy illustrations as a sort of field guide to the logos of the web.

Take a look, and let us know what you think of these trends — and what trends we should have included — in the comments.

1. Badges and Buttons

We’ve moved away from the once-ubiquitious BETA! button, but location-esque badges, app-like icons, and “play” buttons are still showing up all over the web. These logos tend to be quite “shiny,” thanks to a few carefully-blended white gradient layers. The square logos have rounded corners. Some appear to glow as if lit from within, which is a compelling and trendy effect in itself. All in all, the badge-and-button set look quite touchable.

Still, this trend’s days may be numbered, if only due to overuse and association-bordering-on-marriage with the Apple/iPhone brand. See also: Wet floor effect.

2. Speech Bubbles and Megaphones

If social web apps are all about communication, then it stands to reason that many social web company logos are all about talking. We see fewer logos that revolve around listening (if you happen to see a giant ear logo in the wild, do let us know), but megaphones and speech bubbles abound.

3. Fun With Opacity!

Remember the first time you discovered Multiply and Overlay blend modes in Photoshop? If that moment changed your life forever, then you probably understand the beauty of a simple, elegant logo that delicately plays with opacity.

While this logo treatment won’t work for every web app, it’s a versatile and timeless way to present classic shapes in a new light. We’re seeing this basic effect used simply in MasterCard-reminiscent designs, and we’re seeing much more complex opacity effects used in logos for HTML5 and Microsoft Silverlight, for example.

Playing with blending modes, opacity and overlapping shapes can also be a fun way to experiment with analogous color schemes.

4. Kawaii Illustration

Calling all woodland creatures: You’re wanted on the Internet. In fact, the only time you’ve been in greater demand than you are now was when Disney was making those saccharine “princess” films.

Why are these wide-eyed, adorable critters making their way into logo design? Apps are for adults, right? Especially apps such as Seesmic, a powerful web app dashboard for power users and the enterprise, and GitHub, an industry standard for source code hosting.

We don’t know exactly how, when or why kawaii made a comeback into serious-business logo design, but with logos this cute, who are we to complain?

5. Scripts, Slabs and Other Cool Fonts

Say it with me: “I will not use Archer for a web company’s logo design.”

Archer and its ilk were used to great effect over the past couple years on a number of memorable web company logos. That being said, the Year of the Slab is definitely not over. In fact, it’s more of an epoch than a traditional Gregorian year at this point. Slab serif fonts — if they’re unique fonts — are still a viable alternative to been-there-done-that sans serifs in logos, and the web community still enjoys them.

That being said, a good, juicy script can be one of the liveliest, most unexpected logo choices yet, particularly if your logo is solely typographic. Rephoria uses my personal favorite, Candy Script, a swash-heavy number that’s almost too voluptuous for work but which still makes the cut for a single-word logo.

Just remember: When using more unusual fonts for logo design, restraint and legibility are key.

6. Verdant and Plant-Inspired

Plants and leaves aren’t just for green tech companies, folks. When you’re trying to project growth, one of the most obvious logo choices is flora. A shy set of leaves, a furling bud, a sprouting seed — what could better convey your company’s fresh problem solving and rapid expansion?

7. Quadrangles

It’s not a rectangle, it’s not a square, but whatever it is, it’s popping up everywhere. Quadrangles are, if the web is to be believed, the new dots. From rhombuses to parallelograms to indescribable yet angular blobs, these shapes strive for post-modern and consumer-friendly.

8. Retro Game References

Perhaps it’s because the newer crop of web designers are also children of the late eighties, but we’ve been seeing a lot of pseudo-retro, video game-inspired logo work lately. While these designs are definitely quirky, geeky and cool, beware using them for a general audience; not everyone feels the same nostalgia we do for an 8-bit, pixelated graphic of a mushroom.

9. Color-Coordinated Compound Words

Web startup names and logos are inextricably linked. We’re a couple years past the compound word phase (which was most virulent right before the tragic “missing vowel” phase that gave birth to web companies with names like “Packg” and “Clevrr”), but we haven’t left behind our love for merged-word logos in two snappy, coordinating colors.

This trick is one of the oldest in the book. It was notably used for Vignelli Associates’ 1967 rebranding of American Airlines, whose two-word name became a one-word logo in red and blue.

10. Logotypes

The big boys of the web, sites such as Google and Facebook, have inspired the logo design of a generation with their utter simplicity. In many cases, those initial logotypes were less legitimate logo design and more “put our startup’s name in a simple font and stick it up on the web, we’ll deal with branding later.”

The name-in-a-sans-serif look says your company has nothing to prove and that you focus on product over promotion. If it’s well-executed, it’s a powerful statement to make. However, if poorly executed, it looks hasty, sloppy, juvenile and amateurish.

Logotypes can also be a great excuse to play with exciting typefaces and trendy treatments, such as the embossed or letterpress look that’s getting so much play these days, thanks to CSS3.

11. Nodes, Spokes and Hubs

Between concepts such as linked data and the synaptic web, you had to see these designs coming. They remind us of molecular structure and K’nex, an updated take on the crop of mid-century modern Sputnik-inspired designs of the 1950s. These logos are usually intended to represent the interconnectedness of people and content on the web, or, in a more literal interpretation, computer hardware circuitry.

An excellent study of this concept is Bernard Barry’s designs for the 2010 f8 conference.

What Trends Are You Spotting?