Terrorist logos: graphic design

Ironic Sans has a roundup of logos for terrorist groups, clustered into graphic categories: Stars, One Gun, Two Guns Crossed, Other Weapons Crossed, Crossbones, Animals with Multiple Heads, and Other. He worked from the Wikipedia entry on terrorists, which is as good a source as any, but necessarily flawed, since the difference between "terrorist" and "guerrilla fighter" depends on whose side you're on. My great-uncle who lost an arm fighting for the Partisans was a terrorist by some definitions.

It recently occurred to me that someone had to actually design those logos. But how did they decide who gets to do it? Did the job go to whichever terrorist had a copy of Adobe Illustrator?

I did some research and rounded up as many logos as I could find from terrorist groups past and present. While I hate to give terrorists any more attention, I still think it’s interesting to see the various approaches they took in their logos, and wonder what considerations went into designing them. Does the logo successfully convey the organization’s message? Is it confusingly similar to another group’s logo? Does it exhibit excessive drop shadows, gradients, or use of whatever font is the Arabic equivalent of Papyrus?

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)