The Creeping Tentacles of the Swoosh

They look like crafty celestial streaks, heavenly halos and bolts from the blue. Like Saturn’s rings, racing clouds or brilliant beams of light, they orbit in and around our lives with alarming regularity.

And everywhere you look, you find them: from your sneakers to your coffee cup to your phone book to your daily Internet surfing. They are the pre-millennial graphic equivalent of “have a nice day”: omnipresent smiley faces of a logo-obsessed, icon-driven, digitally fearless world.

Meet the swoosh.

These graphic images don’t really have a formal name. Think of them as a comet’s tail, a planetary brush stroke, a winking curlicue or an uptown amoeba. But we warn you, once you become aware of them, you’ll begin seeing them in nearly every facet of your existence. And like a bad song caught in your head , you might regret acknowledging their existence.

Go ask Alice Matsumoto.

The 23-year-old quality-assurance analyst for a Vancouver Internet company got caught up in a strong gust of swoosh after complaining on her Web site that she began noticing the graphic streaks in the logos of Internet companies.

“One day, I happened to mention on my site that if I saw another swoosh logo, I’d scream. I just started noticing them everywhere, and the lack of originality was driving me insane,” Matsumoto said. “A few days later, I started collecting them just for fun. I was immediately deluged with dozens of e-mails from people submitting their own swooshy logo sightings.”

Matsumoto’s Web site (https://www.gradfinder.com/50cups/rings/rings.html) features logos from swashbuckling companies such as Biztravel.com, Broadway.com, Bigstar.com, Amazon.com and Earthlink.com.

Corporate logos for Boeing, Intel, Nortel, Dow Jones, Visa and SNET all feature swooshy strokes that suggest planetary rings, comets and atoms.

The forerunner? Nike, which has branded our collective consciousness with this logo equivalent of Tribbles.