Evolving Designs

There's a fascinating post over at We Make Money Not Art about the “evolving” logo used by the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics.

Michael Schmitz's logo evolves over time based on a number of factors related to the company. From the post:

Looking for a suitable design solution, Mika soon learned about cellular automata, especially Conway's famous Game of Life, subject of many art pieces. His software basically follows the same rules in creating a dynamic logo for MPI-CBG in time, but the parameters are coupled to certain factors: number of employees = density, funding = speed, number of publications = activity. Different logos are being “bred” and then picked by fitness in relation to the parameters or voted for by the employees. Thus, every time the logo is displayed on a website as an animated icon or printed out on a letter, it reflects the current state of the lab as a living organism.

Could semi-intelligent, evolving designs be the wave of the future? The logo reminds me a little of designer Shaun Inman's recently launched experiment Heap where the archives of his blog fade in color as you go further back in time.