Famous Logos Revised: Fortune 500 Sans Fortune

Downward design, or what happens when the corporate glass is half-empty.

We’re going down. Just listen to the media, the politicians, the self-proclaimed experts — we’re bombarded with messages of economic apocalypse. And it seems like it’s not just little guy taking the hit. So what happens to the biggest logs that stoke the fire of capitalism, the world’s most powerful and recognized brands, at a time of indisputable recession?

According a yet-to-be-tracked down designer, by way of a good friend of ours, here’s what happens.

• Update: The original author of the work has finally stepped forward — the logo parodies below were designed by the team at Business Pundit. For the full collection in all its glory, please see their original article.

The images were emailed to us by a friend who found them on a random Istanbul-based student Yahoo group. But we’re bent on giving proper credit to this piece of genius, so stay tuned for updates.

Meanwhile, we thought we’d add one — perhaps THE sign-of-the-apocalypse one — of our own, and leave you with that:

• Related Post: 6 Signs the Apocalypse Cometh (And 6 Signs It Goeth Away)

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In other news…

We interrupt this program to bring you an utterly off-topic, yet utterly amusing message:

6 Signs the Apocalypse Cometh

Shortcuts to obesity, paid shamelessness, D.C.’s constitutional right to bitch-slapping, and a potent antidote to it all.

It’s been the year of tectonic shifts, good and bad. A very real recession is upon us, a presidential election just made history in more ways than we can count, and the climate crisis has reached catastrophic proportions. It seems like (almost) everything good and holy is falling apart.

But because the devil’s in the details, we’re seeing the signs of the apocalypse in all sorts of places — some serious, some not, but all a what-have-we-lived-to-see cultural forehead-slapper.

NO NEED TO GET OFF THE COUCH FOR PIZZA

You can now order it from your TiVo or right inside Facebook.

Because picking up the phone or typing a URL into your browser is too much work.

GUY KAWASAKI SWITCHES TO COMCAST

Check.

Yep, we don’t get it either.

POLITICIANS OUTDUMB THEIR ELECTORATE

Elected U.S. officials score 44% on a simple civic knowledge test.

The uninformed commonfolk who elected them score 49%.

PAYPERPOST INFESTS TWITTER

Check.

It’s not how we roll.

POLYGAMISTS BAN GAY MARRIAGE

Check.

Don’t get us wrong, we have a couple of Mormon friends who are among the coolest people we’ve ever met. Which makes it all the harder to reconcile why their kind would try to deny others the basic human right to happiness they’ve been afforded themselves. Some, ahem, multiple times.

BEGGARS FLY PRIVATE JETS

Big Three auto execs fly private jets — 3 separate ones — from Detroit to D.C. for their hearings before the Senate and House to beg for an additional $25 billion of taxpayer money, get bitch-slapped for ridiculously timed display of corporate excess.

Oh snap.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Yep, the world has gone mad. But we like to think that for every preposterous, shameless, or downright idiotic drop of apocalyptic poison, there’s an even more powerful antidote.

6 SIGNS THE APOCALYPSE GOETH AWAY

1. Yes We Can.
2. Yes We Can.
3. Yes We Can.
4. Yes We Can.
5. Yes We Can.
6. Yes We Can.