Logo Away, Please!

One of the many reasons I loathe television and refuse to watch virtually everything on it is the presence of those horrible little translucent logos at the bottom of the screen. It turns out that these logos aren't just annoying reminders of the fact that You Are Always Watching a Commercial, but they're bad design, too:

The technical term is DOG, for digital on-screen (or originated) graphics, and we’ve all seen them: touting the next program in the line-up when you’ve barely begun watching something else, your eye jumps from the main action as the marginal encroachment of the logo — referred to in certain circles as an “obnoxicon” — performs its little dance, which, frankly, is anything but marginal. (Here is the US, some of these logo dances have begun to include sound, producing a horrifying little moment of audio confusion that even John Cage would be hard pressed to enjoy.) Plasma screen TV manufacturers warn consumers of warranty limitations in the event of “screen burn” — literally, an unfortunate casualty wherein the logo becomes permamently "burned" into the screen as a consequence of the TV being left on the same station for too long.

Sadly, the profusion of animated logos seems unlikely to abate any time soon. They might as well go ahead and implant the logo right on your brain.