Phylomeny

This idea just sprung to my mind when I was staring at the TED logo and I immediately started to collect all the logos/icons which somehow had an influence on my life (at least for one year), be it a commercial brand, an institution, a tv series, a band, a software or a website. I spent a whole day searching, scanning, editing, sometimes recreating these things, and it was a strange experience full of surprises and nostalgia. It made me smile when I saw the chronological connections between some icons that I had not thought of before.

The final surprise to me was to see how good icons are at defining a person, and I’m not talking blunt capitalism here (the piece on its own takes care of that job plainly without any need for my blabbers). For one thing, just the commercial products wouldn’t be enough. And although I am fully aware of a more interesting definition of capitalism which includes all the modern mythologies from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Harry Potter, I think that there are icons there that you still can’t fit in that definition and without which this piece wouldn’t be strong enough; strong enough to make me want to look at this thing for hours like a vain girl looking at a mirror – this may sound weird, but you probably would understand what I feel if you were to look at your own version of this. It is also worth noting that towards 2009 appear some items that I myself created as a designer, which in turn started to define me – like the icon of my band or the logo of our design collective Fevkalade.

Some of the old items – like Cicibebe, Nutella or Remeron – are still wholly present in my life, by the way. I placed those things according to where they first made appearance. There are some old items I’m still looking for, so this is not the final version. I also plan to update it as years go by.

Updates

• Ece, Arman and Serhan made their own ones with clever twists on the layout. If you also plan to make your versions, please send me links so that we can build an archive.
• I’ll leave this first version here as it is – you’ll be able to follow my updated version of it here as years go by.