‘Swoosh’ is in for area firms

It’s everywhere.

The swoosh logo is “in,” and more and more marketers of the corporate world are just doing it.

The logos of StarTek, New Century Energies and the Fort Collins Economic Development Corp. — to name just three — all are a swirl of all-too-familiar swooshes, making The Eye wonder: Who’s following whom?

StarTek’s version, designed in navy and maroon with more space between the swooshes than most, is not a double-swoosh, one official at StarTek said, but an “S.”

StorageTek’s logo — of the double-double-swoosh variety — similarly depicts an “S,” and the brains behind the logos for both companies might have you believe that New Century Energies’ red double-swoosh also suggests an “S” — albeit a reversed one.

But “Ss” — like swooshes — bare no obvious connection with New Century’s name or line of business and so, The Eye muses, there must be some other appeal.

“What you’re seeing is a variation on the spiral,´ said Scott Ackerman, owner of Synergy Graphics. “Galaxies in space, a snail shell. It’s a form that’s found in nature.”

Ah, nature.

“They always say no ideas are really original,´ said Leslie Charpentier, owner of A Design Firm and designer of Synergy’s swooshes. “People can come up with the same thing, but to intentionally copy things is definitely wrong.”

The logo for the Fort Collins EDC — two white swooshes entangled with two olive swooshes à la yin-yang — is neither the least nor last aboard the trend.

“What I see is a clear, crisp image recognizable not only to our investors but also to the community as a whole,´ said EDC president Roland Mower — though others, he said, have actually been able to pick out the organization’s initials from the swirling forms.

“We were going into a rebirth of the organization,´ said Mower of the logo’s mid-1990’s origin. “With the new look came a new name.”

But The Eye’s had a look, and the look is not so new.

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