My daughter got some playing cards for Christmas - biblical versions of the card games Old Maid and Go Fish (by the way, what is wrong the "secular" version of these games; were the fish too worldy? show too much scale? cursing like sailors? was the old maid dressed too provocatively? was she an alcoholic? I don't get it; but I digress). I thumbed through the cards for Bible Old Maid observing the illustrations.

I had to laugh at the inflated cheeks that looked like they were going to burst; the "special" white shading that gives the illusion of depth. Something my friend and I termed "plumping".

There seems to be a current trend in design toward this "plumping" technique - adding the illusion of dimension to objects (logos, graphical elements, grid spaces, etc) to make them pop off the page. Overall, I find the effect tired and frivolous. There are cases when adding shading helps to distinguish an object from logo type. Making a logo dimensional for the sake of making it dimensional (Firefox, UPS, Aflac, et al) seems nothing more than gimmick and fad. It adds nothing to the overal message or meaning of the symbol - it's just plumping them. Looks like they might explode.