Have you ever wondered that? Is there some “web cabal” that sits in their beanbag chairs with indirect lighting overhead and thinks…”lets make things shiny”…and then for the next 6 months every site looks like it is under a pane of glass.

The question hit me when I was looking at Smashing Magazine’s new list of all the logos that use leaves. I mean seriously…there are like 20 different logos that somehow incorporate a leaf in the design. How in the world?

Realistically I know how it happens. Someone makes a cool site or logo and then one designer sees it, then another, and another and finally you have a forest of little leaf icons all over the world.

What is interesting to think about is there are probably a dozen people in the “web world” that create something new and then there are about a million others who copy and expand upon the idea. Don’t you want to be one of those dozen? How cool would that be? To be the guy (or gal) that decided that was behind the “wet and shiny” look that took the design world by storm.

Now I say that would be cool, but honestly, it would take some serious cojones to be that person because for every iPod you think up, you have 100 Newtons that get ridiculed.

Still it would be a lot of fun when you do make your iPod…

So here is a question. What if you were one of the lucky few who has enough clout to really push the next thing in the world of web design? What would your next thing be?