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A designer, artist and art director, as well as a copywriter and columnist, he also teaches at the HSE School of Design. His creative career has been recognized with over 30 design awards, including the prestigious Good Design and Red Dot awards. He is also a jury member at renowned festivals such as Cannes Lions, Eurobest, and AD Stars. The author of "Parable Therapy, or the Book of Meanings about Marketing" (along with Sergey Kuzhavsky) is a prominent figure in the marketing field. He wrote regularly for Snob magazine and also contributed to specialized publications such as graphic design magazine [kak], as well as Creative Director and Vedomosti.
“A gentle rain will come, and the air will be filled with the aromas of the earth,
Through the morning light and until the evening, the cheerful trills of swift swifts are heard.
And the evening songs of frogs, heard from the ponds,
And the blossoming of plum trees in gardens strewn with snow-white flowers.
A fiery lump will soar to the fence,
And the trill of a robin weaves a bright pattern.
And no one, absolutely no one will remember the war -
Lived and forgotten, there is no point in returning to this.
Not a single bird, not a single tree will lose their tears.
If humanity disappears from the surface of our planet.
And now spring has come, which will bring with it a new dawn.
"Without realizing that we have already left this place."
Sarah Teasdale is a poet whose works have been translated by Lev Zhdanov.
Many experts in the field of philology and futurology argue that high-quality science fiction has the ability to foresee the future. Karel Čapek did not invent robots in the full sense of the word, but he did coin their name: the term "robot" comes from the Czech word "robota", which means hard, routine work.
Ray Bradbury in his melancholic post-apocalyptic work "There Will Come Soft Rains" anticipated the concept of a smart home. In this story, the building continued to function, demonstrating its intelligence despite the absence of residents, giving it a simultaneously intelligent and stupid character.
H.G. Wells predicted the advent of nuclear weapons and laser technology, which he described as Martian "death rays."
Mark Twain foresaw that in the future, people would be able to obtain information about everything and interact with anyone. His concept of the "telelectroscope" resembled a modern computer connected to the Internet.
While I'm neither a science fiction writer nor an experienced writer, I'd still like to try to make a few predictions.
As a child, I witnessed computers with far more limited capabilities than the laptop I'm currently typing this on occupy entire halls, hundreds of meters long. Instead of today's external drives and floppy disks, they used punch cards—a very practical format for paper card indexes that had no digital equivalent. Data could be written on the sturdy cardboard by hand, like library cards, although even such cards are unlikely to be familiar to many of today's readers.
Throughout my career, dramatic changes have occurred, and this process continues at an incredible rate. I've lived through the evolution from 286 and 386 computers, become familiar with desktop Mac systems, and have lived to see a time when even a person without specialized knowledge can ask an artificial intelligence a question via their smartphone. In just a minute, it receives an answer that would have taken days of human effort just ten years ago.
In one of my previous columns, I delved into the functioning of artificial intelligence in the field of design and assessed the fruits of its creative work. Currently, the results leave much to be desired, but given the rapid, if not avalanche-like, progress of technology, I am convinced that it will still achieve significant success. An artificial designer, although not a wolf, will eventually be able to find its way in the world of high technology, leaving humans behind.
During my experiments, I decided to turn to another artificial intelligence. This one turned out to be more productive: it created numerous logos, the quality of which significantly surpassed the previous ones. I looked through more than sixty options and, tired, decided to stop, while he continued to generate new ideas tirelessly.
I started thinking: let's say that standard two-dimensional logos really will be created by machines. However, human progress moves without stopping, and I want to reflect on the direction in which logo creation will develop in the future. Let me take the position of a predictor, as some science fiction writers did, who did not simply guess about the future, but made conscious forecasts.
First of all, there will be no need to create a robot. After we develop it, it will begin to improve itself. Moreover, it will do this much more effectively than we. This is due to the fact that it is well aware of its capabilities and knows in which direction it should develop, while we are only trying to imagine various options, without having a real opportunity to look into its "mind", which it does not actually have. We will only cautiously strive to manage the ongoing processes.
Secondly, we can expect logos to transform into adaptive and dynamic elements that will change depending on various circumstances. They will become contextual, situational, and almost alive. The Mercedes three-pointed star and Adidas three stripes will strive to adapt to each product, while maintaining their uniqueness, but without remaining static.
Standard logos will certainly not disappear, but over time they may turn into something like relics, reflecting a flat reality. For example, this applies to packaging, emblems on the hoods of cars, and labels on textiles. However, even in these areas, technological changes await us in a few years - and it is difficult to predict what packaging, cars, and clothing will look like in the future...
We will likely witness the emergence of something similar to logoholography, with pseudo-volumetric symbols appearing on the horizon. This will happen as virtual and augmented reality becomes part of everyday life.
Logos will emerge that can reflect our mood, IQ, professional interests, and sexual orientation. Thus, the same logo will be perceived differently by each person.
Even if the human race ever ceases to exist, artificial intelligences will continue to create these new natural logos for their counterparts. And our shadows on burnt walls will no longer be able to tell us anything about it.
Nevertheless, I still harbor hope that I will be able to witness amazing achievements of the future. Even if only as a spectator, observing how the machines function.
Science fiction sometimes served as a clue for Kolya, helping him predict what awaited him or explain what he observed. However, in some cases, it also put him in a difficult position. The authors of such works should at least once visit this place to avoid misconceptions. How can one write about the future without having a clue about reality?
Kir Bulychev. "One Hundred Years Later" ("Guest from the Future")
Instead of an epilogue:
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Check out information from our earlier issues:
- Eternal language: the communication capabilities of a sign in the context of a system.
- Analyzing the New Year tree: New Year is a brand with its own mascots and marketing strategies.
- Bringing your idea to life: can neural networks understand design?
- A herbarium without a kangaroo: how many meanings can a logo have?
- How to scare a nymph: what is the psychology of color and does it really have an impact?
- Should Shura be involved in creating the logo: what is its potential value and why does it make sense not to disclose this information?