X’s and O’s

The X’s

A few weeks ago I read a post on AIGA’s web site regarding the abundant amount of uses of “X” in our culture yet that wealth of usage reflects extremely poorly in the dictionary. I couldn’t believe how many ways the X is used. The common, traditional “X marks the spot” and the roman numeral for 10 were easily mentioned in the post, while the all-too-frequent substitutions for “ex-” words in marketing culture like “X-treme” were not left out, either.

What I didn’t realize was that X was also used to indicate “experiment” in aerospace: NASA’s X-33 Program and X-15 aircraft. Come to think of it, the letter X just adds some sort of futuristic mysteriousness to new technology that gets your imagination going. Even cars, a modern-era technology, can have names with “X” in it, suddenly making it more “cool”: “Xterra,” “Turbo X,” and “X-Type” (Jaguar has the most amount of cars that I’ve seen with X-names)

If we were to talk about the amount of unique, stand out, unusual uses for a character, I think “X” is the most used character in our culture, after “O,” of course.

And the O’s

As we cruises along the last month of 2007, I couldn’t help but to start thinking about what to do on New Year’s Eve. Then I remember watching people in Times Square on TV, celebrating with their goofy, unoriginal glasses where the two middle zeroes of Two-Thousand-Whatever for the past seven years circled (no pun intended) the eyes. And then it hit me. Next year (or in less than a month), there will be two more circular frames on those glasses, not that they’ll be used to see through, but they are circles nonetheless, zeroes nonetheless, O’s nonetheless.

I’m actually surprised that I haven’t seen any 2008 calendars where they hungrily took advantage of those two extra circles to make some sort of bubbles galore. I mean, that’s where I would go first for design ideas, but I know that as a freshie designer learning the craft, I must resist the most obvious and therefore most unoriginal solution. Still, that shouldn’t stop the amateur calendar designers to get someone to turn that 8 into a designer’s eyesore. I mean, so many people did it for 2000, and they had only three circles! Think of what you can do with four!

As we get past the New Year’s celebration and the calendar buying frenzy, there are still occasions where the number 2008 will be typographically manipulated to death throughout the year. Think of all the special annual events and conferences and awards shows that will have to incorporate 2008 into the logo. Most people will have thousands of variations of one circle concept, where one or two look decent, while some just don’t even try to dignify that trend with any typographic solution. But there will be that one or two pieces where the circular forms of “2008” will escape expectations and display a composition that no one has thought of, and design will win another battle.

So watch out for the O’s next year; you’ll get tired of round design and then everything will be flat and sharp.

Flush.