once every 4 years

Computers have evolved like a million years in just a couple of decades. Today I was remembering how complicated was to copy or rename a file using DOS. Even jumping from one folder to other was a challenging adventure and then to ask for a directory at each level using A:\>dir ... it was certainly the stone age! But not just computers have evolved. At that time many people (including me) used to say that computers could not possible replace hand work, pre-press high contrast negatives, or many of the work done for graphic design, including digital photography. And it was simply because there was not enough power and digital capacity back then. For example, the image below would take a third of a 320KB diskette, but the full size file would overflow a high density double sided 3.5" floppy, and the original photoshop file would almost fill entirely the 10MB hard drives used at that time.

Anyway, printing techniques have evolved into amazing possibilities now that storage size is not an issue... at least not like it was back then. At those times it was usual to have a logo (or any material to be printed) on just 1, 2 or 3 inks (if you could afford that) Full colour prints were limited to millionaires.

Just think about old personal business cards: most of the people had business cards printed just black... nowadays, even "escorts" have high definition full colour business cards with their "real pictures". So, there's no excuse on having a boring "plaster" logo, when you can take full advantage of gradients and high definition printing. That's why many companies have changed their logos into 3D images. These are just some examples.

When I was collecting images for this collection, I found the history or autopsy of the starbucks logo. The merging of the old starbucks two tailed mermaid and "il giornale" was like the merging of the Mr. Sparkle logo only more pornographic. So, the mermaid had to cover her attributes, and a close-up was necessary to avoid a PG-18 rating. I never thought that political correctness could affect what we see or can't see on logos.

ciao