Gimme a swirly

About once a year, I like to redesign my various Web sites. It's an exercise in creativity and a way of keeping my Web design skills as current as I can.

For the past couple of days I've been looking at various Web sites, commercial graphics, etc. for inspiration. For example, first I noticed this logo:

And, I thought, that's pretty neat and something along those lines will make an interesting exercise in graphic design. But then I happened upon this one:

Then I went downtown and saw this logo:

which is, of course, a variation on this logo:

In fact, as time went on, I discovered that swirly/swooshy/spirally logos proliferate, and there are even Web pages intended to critique this phenomenon.

So what's up with this? Is there a conspiracy afoot to make us all dizzy? (And if it's afoot, is Nike behind it?) At first I was starting to be disappointed because if I designed my own swirly logo, I wouldn't be all that original. Now I'm worried that I'll be left out if I don't have one. Maybe I should rebrand to something like this:

Mind you, it does look darn fine as a splash graphic on my Palm.

Postscript: Practically no sooner do I post this than DC Comics unveils its new logo. And it's got - you guessed it - a nice blue swirly that, according to the Publisher's Note, "will be spinning onto the whole line in June":

No kidding. I'm dizzy already.

(H/T: Ramblings' Journal.)