Some logos impose stories on us. For example, about the founder at KFC, about Greek mythology at Starbucks, that you can smile at TUI, that you can get everything at Amazon (arrow from A to Z) and that TikTok once began as a music streaming service (quaver). However, spontaneous deciphering of the meaning is only possible to a limited extent without help. Formal derivations such as the Bavarian flag squeezed into a circle at BMW (but no propeller!), a capital N at Netflix or, taken quite literally, a bird's nest at Nestlé somehow seem more logical to us. Stories such as the overcoming of borders in Adidas' mountain logo (Adidas Performance logo) or a communicating community in the former Ebay logo (letters dancing on top of each other) seem a little exaggerated to us. Did they want to spice up the purely formal idea with an interesting story?

The Ebay logo in particular has now switched to a simple representation and leaves the storytelling to the users. The Microsoft logo has also become even more banal as a result of the last relaunch. The old Microsoft logo at least still had dynamism and a notch in the O where the eye could linger when swiping over it. Are we living in a time of increasing banalisation of logos? Apple is defending its apple with all its might and is also shooting at pears, as the legal dispute against PREPEAR shows. Apple managers want to counteract the erosion into banality. Not everyone can do that.

Mark Zuckerberg has finally created an umbrella organisation for his many brands, paid a lot of money for the legal use of the name Meta and put a well-known infinity symbol in front of it. It is supposed to be a convoluted M - which only creative people with a broad horizon of interpretation can see. Sure, the Berlin start-up NEWSENSELAB is crying now and regrets that it did not have its infinity symbol, or rather M symbol, protected under trademark law. But between us professionals: it would never have been registrable. It lacks the distinctive character required under trade mark law and, above all, the level of creativity. This applies to both logos. It is simply an infinity sign and the typography comes from the digital type case.